Austin American-Statesman: Thousands of Central Texas students rally for gun laws

The McCallum High School sophomore said she hears the statistics, in some form or another, over and over again as adults try to quell her fears and reassure her that she won't be the next student to take a bullet while cowering in a classroom.

Kelsey said her father was telling her the same thing on Feb. 27 when she received an alert to stay away from an Austin Community College campus after a man with a gun was reported at the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Austin.

She hears the same words as teachers lock their classroom doors during active shooter drills, preparing for the worst — "It probably won't be us."

"But what about our siblings and our best friends? The faces we see when we walk down the hall? Will they be OK, too?" Kelsey said. "It's not fair to hope and pray that it won't be you or I, because without change, it will be someone. Close or far, it will be someone. Someone like us, ripped from this world too quickly, a classmate that will never walk across the stage at graduation, a child whose parents never got to send them to college through heartfelt goodbyes, a person who wanted to leave high school with their whole life ahead of them, but instead is leaving in a body bag."

Kelsey was one of thousands of Central Texas students who walked out of their schools Friday to participate in the National School Walkout, the latest in a string of student-led protests calling for stricter gun laws they say could prevent mass shootings like the massacres at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. in February, and Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Friday's protests fell on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine mass shooting, and multiple schools observed 13 minutes of silence to honor the students and teacher who died.

Hundreds of similar walkouts were held around the nation Friday — organizers expected students at 2,700 U.S. schools to participate — although crowds in many places were reported to be smaller than at previous student-led demonstrations for gun control. At Stoneman Douglas High, about 50 students left the school to protest at a park, far fewer than the thousands who participated previously.

Elsewhere, more than 1,000 gathered at Iowa's state Capitol in Des Moines, several hundred gathered in New York's Washington Square, and more protesters gathered outside the White House on Friday.

In Austin, Elijah Stephens, a junior at McCallum, said a close friend was placed on lockdown a few days after the Parkland shooting when a threat was made against another Austin school district campus.

"That was terrifying because she's my oldest friend and I've known her forever. I'm tired and it's absolutely ridiculous and there's no reason for anyone to have access to guns like these people are using," Elijah said. "I'm here because I'm tired of being looked over. I'm tired of being scared that something is going to happen."

Hundreds of students also poured out of McNeil High School in the Round Rock school district on Friday morning. They held signs that read "make murder more difficult," "gun rights or human rights" and "don't fight firearms with firearms" while observing a moment of silence for students who lost their lives in violent attacks.

A handful of students who opposed the walkout stood on the outskirts of the rally, including 18-year-old Andrew Ulcak.

People cause problems, not guns, Andrew said.

"They are carrying a sign that says ‘Books not Bullets,' but they are skipping class and it is an unexcused absence," he said.

More than 2,000 students left their schools, boarded buses or hopped in cars and gathered at Wooldridge Square Park before marching to the Capitol for an afternoon rally. But many more participated in events on campus at virtually every high school in Austin, and at some middle schools.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, told the students who walked out of their schools that they had to do so because too many elected officials had walked out on them already.

He said students protesting across the United States are the only reason there is still a national conversation about gun violence.

Mahalia Norton, a Hays High School student who attended the Capitol rally, said there were two shooting threats at her school on Thursday.

"I could not study for any of my tests to safe my life," she said. "I don't like feeling threatened where I go to learn."

Mahalia said she would like to see the gun debate become a less polarizing issue.

Austin High School freshman Olivia Hoffman was one of the student organizers behind the rally.

"I appreciate America's history and the role guns had to play in that. However, we do not deserve a country controlled by a political pressure group hell-bent on bringing absolutism to the Second Amendment," Olivia said. "We deserve to get an education without the annihilation. We don't need hardened schools, we need hardened laws."

Staff writers Mary Huber and Claire Osborn contributed to this report.