Paul McCartney remembers John Lennon at New York gun control rally: 'One of my best friends was killed by gun violence right around here'

The Beatles star was one of a number of celebrities to march at events across the country

Sir Paul McCartney has taken part in the March for Our Lives event in New York, saying that part of the reason he did so was because "one of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here."

Sir Paul was referring to his fellow Beatles member John Lennon, who was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside the entrance to the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on 8 December 1980.

Wearing a shirt emblazoned with the phrase "We can end gun violence," Sir Paul said that what happened to Lennon means the issue is "important to me".

The music star was one of 175,000 people to take part in the New York event, according to a tweet from the city's mayor Bill de Blasio. The march was itself one of more than 800 events scheduled to take place around the world on Saturday, including the anchor event in Washington DC.

When asked whether actions such as the nationwide marches will make a difference in securing more gun control, Sir Paul told CNN: "I don't know." But he added that it is "what we can do, so I am here to do it."

The focal point was the March for Our Lives rally in Washington DC, but tens of thousands turned out in cities such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Minneapolis in demonstrations sparked by the survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Valentine’s Day. Beyond America - where there were about 800 events - there were protests in London, Belfast, Geneva and a number of other cities across the globe.

The marches felt like the culmination of more than a month of political pressure led by the survivors of the massacre in which 17 people were killed and more than a dozen others injured. There have been some successes in that time, with some gun control measures having been signed into law in Florida, but the main message was that this was the start of something, not the end.