Colorado high school students sought to change the narrative on guns Wednesday with a pro-Second Amendment walkout that honored school shooting victims while emphasizing that guns and gun rights should not be demonized, KXRM-TV reports.
Woodland Park High School students and other community supporters gathered outside the school for 30 minutes in a demonstration to show that not all high school students are anti-gun.
There was also a pro-gun student rally in Central Florida last week.
"It's all over the news right now that all students hate guns," student Zachary Schneider said, according to Fox News. "I wanted to show that not all students feel that way."
One student at last week's Florida demonstration said she wanted to make it clear that constitutional rights didn't need to be violated in order to make students safer.
"I'm pro-Second Amendment," said Anna Delaney, the student who organized the Florida protest. "I wouldn't mind deeper background checks, of course, but the Second Amendment will not be infringed upon."
The school district in Colorado allowed the students to have 30 minutes during the day for the rally, and increased security during that time for safety purposes.
The students who participated in the pro-gun rally say they felt "silenced" when the walkouts to honor Parkland shooting victims became more about gun control than about the victims.
Students who support gun control, such as Parkland shooting survivors David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, have become the public faces of the school safety debate and have received significant mainstream media attention.
Some students at the pro-gun events support more school security, or arming teachers as ways to protect students, rather than putting all the focus on guns.
"I don't believe that guns are the problem," Woodland Park student Haley Armstead told KXRM. "I think it's more of the people and that people are trying to blame an inanimate object for something that's not them."
Aaron Colen
Aaron is a former staff writer for TheBlaze. He resides in Denton, Texas, and is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Master of Education in adult and higher education.
