The Human Beings represent people who die from gunshot wounds in America every day
It’s a rainy Thursday night in New York and people are streaming into a room in the city’s LGBT Center on West 13th Street. The atmosphere is bubbly, friends are kissing hello and exchanging news, but beneath the chatter there’s an impatient energy. We’re here for a meeting, and time is ticking on.
Gays Against Guns, or GAG as everyone in the room calls it, was set up in the immediate aftermath of the Orlando massacre in June 2016, when Omar Mateen, a 29-year old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in the city. Although there are LGBTs of all ages at the meeting, the core of GAG is made up of veteran activists, some of whom were members of the original ACT UP, which fought for medical research and treatment for AIDS in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and some who were key players in the more recent marriage equality movement.