NEW YORK: Students walked out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday, waving signs and chanting their demands for tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by survivors of the deadly shooting spree at a Florida high school last month.
The #ENOUGH National School Walkout began at 10 am EDT (1400 GMT) with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10 am local time in western time zones, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb 14.
Some students got in an early start. At Fiorello H LaGuardia High School in New York City, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, the colour of the gun-control movement.
“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” read one sign, needling the rote response many lawmakers make after mass shootings.
In Parkland, students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field as law enforcement officers looked on.
The walkouts are 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 US 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.
A large crowd of students gathered and chanted slogans outside the gates of the White House. — Reuters
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