Students marking Columbine anniversary call for gun control in walkouts across U.S.

Thousands of students across the United States are marking 19 years since the massacre at Columbine High School today by walking out of classes, in a show of unity intended to put pressure on politicians to enact tighter gun restrictions.

Students from more than 2,600 schools and institutions were expected to take part, organizers said. They have been asked to wear orange, theofficial colour of the campaign against gun violence, and observea 13-second silence to honour the 13 victims killed at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Waving placards with slogans including "No more gunviolence" and "I should be worried about grades, not guns," they walked out of school in cities including New York, Detroit andWashington.

Outside the White House, scores of young protesters sat insilence while they listened to the names of gun violence victimsread aloud.

"It's an issue that's been in this country for a long time,"said Ayanna Rhodes, 14, who walked out of Washington International School.

"[The Columbine killings]happened like 20years ago, and we are still getting mass shootings in schools."

On April 20, 1999, two Columbine seniors killed 12 of theirclassmates and a teacher before committing suicide. Since then, mass shootings have occurred with shocking frequency across theUnited States.

In the latest gun violence to hit a high school, one personwas wounded and a suspect was in custody after a shooting onFriday morning at Forest High School in Marion County, Florida,police said.

The second deadliest public school shooting in U.S. historyoccurred in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, leaving 17 dead. Theshooting set off a national student movement calling for an endto gun violence and tighter gun restrictions.

Carlos Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior from Parkland'sMarjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was in Columbine for theanniversary, and said he found a sense of solidarity.

"That's the only thing that's keeping us Douglas studentsalive right now: the distraction of fighting for our rights and advocating for our lives," Rodriguez told Reuters. "It's the onething keeping us hopeful, it's the one thing keeping us from notbeing able to sleep at night."

2nd national walkout in weeks

The walkouts, speeches and drive to sign up voters on Fridayare aimed at pressuring U.S. politicians to enact tighterrestrictions on gun sales in the run-up to November's midtermcongressional elections.

After walking out of class and observing the 13-secondsilence, it was up to students how to demonstrate. Suggestions from national organizers included marches to the offices oflocal lawmakers, speeches and voter registration activities.

On Thursday, Colorado gun control activists rallied nearColumbine High School, calling for an end to gun violence.

Columbine has not held classes on April 20 since themassacre, a district spokeswoman said, so there would be nowalkout at the school. Students were encouraged to take part incommunity service.

For Frank DeAngelis, whowas principal of Columbine High School when the shooting occurred, April 20 is "a tough day."

"I think the kids are calling out the adults. The 'Never Again' group from Florida has said that 'you've let us down,'" he told CBC News.

"After every school shooting, whether it be Red Lakes, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, we hear the same rhetoric but we do not do anything about it. So I think now they're saying that action needs to be taken, so we're going to take charge and hopefully they have more success than some of the adults have."

The latest national rally comes more than a month after tensof thousands of students from some 3,000 schools participated inthe #ENOUGH National School Walkout to demand that lawmakersseek tighter gun-control regulations.

It also follows "March For Our Lives" rallies in citiesacross the United States on March 24 that were some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations in decades, with hundreds ofthousands of young Americans and their supporters taking to thestreets to demand tighter gun laws.

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Plans for Friday's walkout began only hours after the Parkland shooting, when a Connecticut teen started an online petition calling for protests on the anniversary of Columbine.

Sophomore LaneMurdockthen gathered a few other students atRidgefieldHigh School to orchestrate the national protest, which seeks to find solutions to gun violence and get young people involved in the political process.

They also have received help from Indivisible, a left-leaning nonprofit based in Washington that helps boost grassroots activism. The group says it was formed after the 2016 election to oppose the policies promoted by President Donald Trump.

"We're walking out to remember every single young person who has been killed by American gun violence,"Murdocksaid in a statement Thursday. "We're walking out to talk about the real problems our country is facing, and the solutions that our leaders are too scared to dream up."

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'We as citizens must make this the voting issue,' says David Hogg of Marjory Stoneman Douglas H.S.

Dudley Brown, president of the Colorado-based NationalAssociation for Gun Rights, said the gun-control movement seeksto have the government take away rights.

"The main objective of these students is to ban firearmscompletely, and confiscate the firearms of law-abiding Americans," Brown said. "We will oppose them at every step."

There's no single organization or group that speaks for students protesting gun laws, but on Friday students in cities across the U.S. took their concerns about gun violenceto the streets,chanting "the NRA has got to go!" and "Enough is enough."

March for Our Lives, which has been a major driver of the recent wave of activism, lists four specific goals, which don't include confiscating guns from law-abiding Americans.

Their stated goals are:

• Universal background checks.
• The creation of a digitized, searchable database for the U.S.Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
• A ban on high-capacity magazines.
• A ban on assault weapons.

Friday's walkout followed a wave of activism in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Organizers urged students to leave class at 10 a.m. to honour victims of gun violence.