The speech notably featured a call and response: "We call B.S.," in response to gun laws, calling for advocacy and empowering young people to speak out against school shootings. The speech then went viral. According to "The Washington Post," González's speech became emblematic of the "new strain of furious advocacy" that sprang up immediately after the shooting. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, González said she felt her message would resonate through repetition. "I knew I would get my job done properly at that rally if I got people chanting something. And I thought 'We call B.S.' has four syllables, that's good, I'll use that. I didn't want to say the actual curse words... this message doesn't need to be thought of in a negative way at all." A recording of González delivering a line in the speech was sampled as the intro for Madonna's "I Rise", released in May 2019. She and other survivors spoke with Florida state legislators in Tallahassee on February 20, 2018. The students watched the legislature vote down debate on an existing gun control bill. The students also spoke at an internationally televised town hall hosted by CNN on February 21, 2018. González and others criticized the National Rifle Association (NRA) as well as politicians who accept money from it, as being complicit in the shootings, and stated that "you're either funding the killers, or you're standing with the children." At the town hall, González pressed an NRA representative to clarify her position on guns. "Dana Loesch, I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that you will not," González said at the town hall. "The shooter at our school obtained weapons that he used on us legally. Do you believe that it should be harder to obtain the semi-automatic and... the modifications for these weapons to make them fully automatic like bump stocks?" Loesch answered González by arguing that mentally ill people shouldn't have access to weapons. González interjected and noted that she hadn't answered her question. "I think I'm gonna interrupt you real quick and remind you that the question is actually, do you believe it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons and modifications to make them fully automatic, such as bump stocks?" Shortly after her viral speech and high-profile media appearances, González joined Twitter and acquired more than 1 million followers within a span of less than ten days.