Gowri Abhinanda ’26
Gowri Abhinanda ’26 has sought to amplify youth voices on gun violence prevention since eighth grade, when the 2018 Parkland shooting twenty minutes away from her home shook her South Florida community.
In high school, the scholar organized peaceful demonstrations to raise awareness of gun violence and founded school and city chapters for youth-led organizations.
Reading about the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, in 2022 further galvanized Gowri to organize a rally in her community, Weston, Florida, before continuing her activism at UNC–Chapel Hill, she said.
“As students, scribbling ‘advocate for our lives and common-sense legislation’ to our agendas in between calculus and essays is tiresome, but I find it incredibly hard to look away when elementary students are being killed,” said Gowri, a political science and journalism double major.
The scholar served the organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence for two years as part of Team ENOUGH, the nonprofit’s youth-led initiative. She led a lobbying cohort to reach elected officials in support of gun violence prevention reforms in Florida.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Gowri Abhinanda ’26 at an event on gun violence prevention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on January 11, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Gowri)
This past semester, Gowri represented the nonprofit to meet with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris to advocate for reducing gun violence in the country. The scholar attended a roundtable discussion on gun violence prevention at Eastway Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Gowri delivered a letter to Vice President Harris at the event with ideas and calls to action after thanking her for the administration’s work on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a major federal gun safety bill passed in 2022.
“My hope is that continued widespread advocacy from young people will urge our leaders to act in favor of our futures and our safety,” the scholar said.
The recent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump, which killed one and injured two others, “highlights the necessity for more reform,” according to Gowri.
Missing from the national conversation has been how to implement effective reform, and the fact that the event was a mass shooting, she said.
“A former president being shot is appalling. How many more appalling events need to happen until we act?”
Gowri is the vice president of the Asian American Student Association at Carolina.
