Students Walk Out from Metro Schools to Demand Gun Control

On Wednesday March 14th, thousands of students around the metro area walked out from class at 10am  to demand action on gun control.

At Fairview High School in Boulder, some students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the scene of the February 14th shooting that killed 17 people, joined the walk out after students in Boulder raised funds to bring them to Colorado. Lina Takahashi spoke with some of the student organizers from Fairview High and some of the Florida students about the national movement that has emerged since the February 14th shooting.

Students walked out of Boulder High School and gathered on the Pearl Street mall downtown. One of the student organizers, Alec Eyl told KGNU’s Richard Kiefer that the goal of the walkout is to create safe environments for students to learn.

“Our goal is to no longer enter our schools with the thought in the back of our minds “hey what’s in that bag over there?” or what’s going to happen when I’m just doing a school project or something and I hear that gun shot go off? We don’t even want that to be a possibility that we have to think of and we’re demanding action.”

Eyl and other students from Boulder High were registering people to vote at the rally.  “If they don’t listen to our call for action now and start producing results, come 10 years when all of us are voting, we’re going to be a major force and they’re going to see gun laws pass that are much more stringent than what we’re calling for right now.”

In Denver, hundreds of students marched to the steps of the state capitol today (Wed 3/14) to protest gun violence and to honor victims of school shootings, including the 17 killed last month in Parkland, Florida.

 Fourteen-year-old Juan Estrada, a student in the 9th grade at East High School in Denver told Bente Birkeland that he would like to see the US follow the lead of other countries that make it more difficult to buy a firearm.

 “Here in the U.S. you can just walk into a store, show your ID, sign some papers, and you’re out of there with a gun. It’s messed up.”  

About 250 students from Columbine High School gathered this morning (Wed 3/14) on a nearby soccer field to remember the 13 killed in the 1999 school shooting.

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