Reuters, New York :
Students will walk out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday to demand tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by student survivors from the Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last month.
The #ENOUGH National School Walkout, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. local time across the country, will last 17 minutes, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14.
The walkout is part of a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack. Some of the survivors have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, and even met with President Donald Trump, to call for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“If our elected officials don’t take responsibility for their inaction on both sides of the aisle, then we are going to kick them out of office,” David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.
The students’ efforts helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age for buying any kind of gun was raised to 21 years from 18, although lawmakers there rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.
In Washington, however, plans to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.
Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups will participate in the walkout, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the walkout’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.
Support has also come from the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom Inc (VIAB.O), which said all seven of its networks, including MTV, would suspend programming at 10 a.m. in each U.S. time zone during the 17-minute walkout.
Students will walk out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday to demand tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by student survivors from the Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last month.
The #ENOUGH National School Walkout, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. local time across the country, will last 17 minutes, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14.
The walkout is part of a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack. Some of the survivors have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, and even met with President Donald Trump, to call for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“If our elected officials don’t take responsibility for their inaction on both sides of the aisle, then we are going to kick them out of office,” David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.
The students’ efforts helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age for buying any kind of gun was raised to 21 years from 18, although lawmakers there rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.
In Washington, however, plans to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.
Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups will participate in the walkout, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the walkout’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.
Support has also come from the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom Inc (VIAB.O), which said all seven of its networks, including MTV, would suspend programming at 10 a.m. in each U.S. time zone during the 17-minute walkout.
