(NewsNation) — Friday marked National Gun Violence Awareness Day in America, with many speaking out for change after several recent deadly shootings that shook the nation.

National Gun Violence Awareness Day was started after the death of Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teen who was shot and killed on a playground one week after she marched in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural parade. According to the Wear Orange organization, Pendleton’s childhood friends wanted to commemorate her life by wearing orange because that’s the color hunters wear in the woods for protection.

As Newsweek reported, the initiative started as a small movement in Chicago, and later became a nationwide campaign led by gun-control advocacy nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. The campaign subsequently was picked up by Amnesty International.

To commemorate National Gun Violence Awareness Day, participants are encouraged not only to wear orange, but also attend events going on nationwide, call their elected officials to ask for action on gun safety, and use hashtags on social media.

All this comes a day after President Joe Biden on Thursday urged more action from lawmakers to combat gun violence.

Calls for tougher restrictions on guns came swiftly following mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed and Buffalo, New York, where 10 people died in a racist attack on a supermarket in a predominantly Black area. Most recently, a man who blamed his surgeon for ongoing pain after back surgery opened fire at a hospital, killing five people, including himself.

Recent data from the Gun Violence Archive shows there have been more than 200 mass shootings so far this year.

“For God’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say enough?” Biden asked in his remarks Thursday.

At rallies across the country, people asked a similar question.

One woman at a rally in Connecticut told NewsNation local affiliate WTNH that she worries her grandchildren will have to live their entire lives in fear.

“We should never have to bury our kids at 12, 13, 14. They’re supposed to be burying us,” Nicole Matthews said. “I don’t want my granddaughter to be in fear. When I brought my granddaughter to school, I was scared to leave her. This is not normal.”

The Associated Press reports that a vote on Democratic legislation that would raise the age limit for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 could come as soon as next week. The bill would also make it a federal offense to import, manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines and create a grant program to buy back such magazines.

But it is expected that Republicans will nearly all be in opposition to the bill, making a vote on it largely symbolic. Meanwhile, the Senate has a bipartisan group working toward a compromise on gun safety legislation that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said is making “rapid progress.”