The Oscars were quite political this year, with several individuals using the platform to criticize the Trump administration. But this time, they used the mother of a nine-year-old victim of the Uvalde school shooting to push for gun control.
Gloria Cazares took the stage at the Oscars as part of the team for a documentary titled All the Empty Rooms, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. She discussed the impact her daughter’s murder has had on her family and argued
My daughter. Jackie was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we'd be a different America.
Mom of 9-year-old Jackie, who was killed in Uvalde during a school shooting, spoke at the Oscars after "All the Empty Rooms" won for best short doc.
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) March 16, 2026
She talked about how gun violence impacts kids in America and that Jackie is more than a headline.https://t.co/R14HEn36lh pic.twitter.com/h8M7LdBWcp
The documentary highlighted the devastation families of mass shooting victims face by showing the empty rooms of the children who have died in these tragedies. The Uvalde shooting, as all others, was used to push for more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. The families of the victims have been calling for more gun control legislation.
The anti-gunner lobby in America has often used the victims of mass shootings to push for more laws restricting gun ownership. Since the facts are not on their side, they have resorted to exploiting these individuals to make emotional appeals to this end.
What happened to these families is heartbreaking. Nobody should have to face the loss of a child to any type of violence — whether or not guns are involved.
The truth, however, is that the laws these people champion would not have stopped any of the mass shootings they use to promote them. In most of these cases, the shooters used weapons that were purchased legally. But most shootings, in general, involve firearms that the assailant obtained illegally, which means gun laws will only make it harder for innocent people to defend themselves.
Moreover, gun control has not stopped school shootings because school shooters do not have a problem with breaking the law. This is why others have put forth more sensible solutions that would actually be effective. Schools must become hard targets, employing security measures to stop a shooter from even getting onto the campus in the first place.