Hundreds Of Thousands Of Students Walk Out To Protest Gun Violence

An estimated hundreds of thousands of students in 3,100 are walking out of classrooms on Wednesday to demand gun control.

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Video:

How many students walked out?

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle said the number of students walking out could be in the hundreds of thousands:

Ruhle said, “Right now, students from more than 3,100 schools across the country are walking out of their classrooms, demanding to know why the adults in Washington are not doing more to strengthen gun laws in this country. The walkouts have begun at 10:00 local time and they’re going for 17 minutes, one minute each for the 17 people killed at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school on Valentine’s day. The pits you are looking at are from Washington, D.C. Where students have been marching from the white house to capitol hill, demanding lawmakers put stricter gun laws into place, including banning assault weapons and expanding background checks. These pictures are from Chicago, where four schools are marching together. The event kicked off just a few moments ago. Here right now, a live picture from St. Paul, Minnesota, a long way from parkland, Texas but a crisis that’s affecting every student, every school across this country, where students there just began their walkout. These live pictures are from Chesterfield, Missouri. Check out the kids streaming out of that school at this very moment. It’s happening here in New York City as well. I’ve got an 11-year-old walking out, and we’ve got reporters fanned out across the country covering the protests which could end up being hundreds of thousands of students. There are some schools who aren’t allowing it. There may be students who want to the walk, and they’re not allowed.”

Any school that is not allowing the walkout is teaching students the wrong lesson. Schools should be about teaching students about civic engagement, and being a good citizen. Schools that don’t allow students to protest are not teaching students about the value of freedom, and the right to peaceful protest.

The movement for gun control is not going away. These students aren’t going to forget about Stoneman Douglas and move on because it is only a matter of time before there will be another record-setting mass shooting. Maybe it will be at a school? Maybe it will be at a concert or a church, but the outcome will be the same. Innocent people will die, which is why these students are standing up and demanding that lawmakers do something to make it more difficult for mass murderers to kill so many people.

Watch live coverage of the protests here.

Gallery images of the walkout, click to enlarge:

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association