As concern grows about increasing shooting incidents in schools, a series of "silent marches" will take place today across the US to highlight the availability of guns to children.
Concerned parents and childsafety activists will take part in the demonstrations outside the headquarters of eight major handgun manufacturers. Protests in other cities will be held throughout May.
The main event will be today in Springfield, Massachusetts, headquarters of Smith & Wesson. The protesters will display 5,285 shoes to commemorate the number of children killed by guns in 1985, the last year for which full statistics are available.
The protests are aimed at making the handgun manufacturers change the methods they use to design, distribute and market their guns. Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns and it is their models which are most used in crimes, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The organiser of the campaign, Ms Ellen Freudenheim, told USA Today that the recent shootings at schools in Jonesboro, Arkansas and in Kentucky, Mississipi and Pennsylvania involving 11 deaths and 25 woundings were behind their efforts to make the gun manufacturers act more responsibly.
The protesters are also calling on Congress to impose on firearms the kind of consumer protection that applies to other products. Firearms are exempt from Consumer Product Safety Commission regulations. Ms Freudenheim said: "Children's teddy bears are subject to more safety regulations than the handguns that kill children."
Some states are going ahead with their own efforts to impose new measures on the manufacturers to make handguns safer. Massachusetts has become the first state to implement consumer protection requiring safety standards and child-safety locks on guns.
Parents and teachers are also concerned about the increasing portrayal of violence on television. TV stations in Los Angeles have been flooded with protests at their decision to interrupt children's programmes and show live footage on Thursday of a deranged man committing suicide on a city freeway.
Horrified viewers saw Daniel Jones unfurl a banner, wave a gun, set fire to himself and then put a bullet in his head. Most of the TV stations apologised yesterday for not cutting away from the shooting scene in time.
At Burbank Airport terminal there where cries of horror in a crowd gathered around a television set. Several mothers covered their children's eyes.
The man's body lay in a pool of blood as police let the vehicle burn out amid explosions on a major freeway near Los Angeles International Airport, bringing rush-hour traffic to a halt for hours.
Police did not approach the burning black pick-up because they saw what they believed were petrol bombs in the back, a police spokesman said.
He said the man, described as in his 40s, had earlier called the California Highway Patrol from a cellular telephone and "rambled on" about his grudge against a health management organisation.
Teachers are now being trained to be more alert to schoolchildren who threaten to commit violence. Pupils who are heard discussing or planning violence are in some schools being immediately questioned by school police and psychologists and their homes contacted to see if guns are available there.
But last week friends of Andrew Wurst (14) did not believe him when he threatened to kill people. He is now accused of shooting dead a teacher, John Gillette, outside a school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.
In Carmel, Indiana, a man apparently upset because his loan application was rejected opened fire on four bank employees, killing the woman who told him his application had been turned down.
Ms Penny Schmidt (32) was shot several times and died after telling the suspect that his application had been turned down, authorities said.