Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School students joined thousands of students nationwide on Wednesday, April 5, in a walkout urging stricter gun laws after the Nashville school shooting.
Witnesses say that about 100 students were in attendance.
They carried signs like “Protect kids, not guns,” and “Guns have more protection than our children.”
The national school walkout was organized by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety through Students Demand Action with 300 demonstrations across 41 states and the District of Columbia, USA Today reported.
The organization follows the school shooting at the Covenant School, a private Presbyterian school in Nashville, Tennessee. A former student school shot and killed three children and three adults on Monday, March 27.
MVRHS students conducted a walkout last year after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas killed 21 victims.
Mental Health issue not a gun control issue.
Every country in the world has citizens with mental health issues yet the US is the only country in the world that has a constant, systemic, mass shooting problem. What is truly the difference? The number of guns in this country and the ease in which they are aquired.
You would have to be crazy to allow people to fly airplanes without evaluating them every year or two.
Pilots can kill hundreds at a time.
Shooters rarely get more than 20 at a time.
It is a waste of money to evaluate gun owners.
It’s good that these are students and still have time to learn that guns don’t walk into a school and kill people. People with mental illness do. The largest school massacre in this country was committed by an unhinged man who blew up a school killing 45 and injuring 58 in Bath, Michigan. Perhaps if this man, and all the other killers since him, had the proper mental health care students today would have no need to protest.
The overwhelming majority of people with mental illness don’t walk into schools (or churches, or synagogues, or grocery stores, or movie theaters) and shoot people. Those who do all have access to guns, and in recent years it’s usually been guns of the semi-automatic sort. Maybe if those guns weren’t so readily available, fewer people would walk into schools (etc.) and shoot people?
I’m also wondering about the mass shooters who don’t seem to have a diagnosable mental illness, unless susceptibility to right-wing racism, misogyny, and/or anti-Semitism could be considered a mental illness? Not a bad idea, IMO. If people with such susceptibility had “proper mental health care,” we’d all be better off, and many, many people would still be alive today.
Are we now to conclude from your list that susceptibility to transgenderism should be considered a mental illness? I hope not.
The overwhelming majority of gun owners don’t walk into schools (or churches, or synagogues, or movie theaters and shoot people.
Remove guns from the equation and the homicidally inclined will use explosive, vehicles, toxins, flammables etc.
Road fatalities in the US exceed 45,000 each year, yet it’s the relatively miniscule number of mass-shooting victims that create the outrage. If lives are of equal value, the road-kill body count should be a far greater issue, but a car crash resulting in multi-fatalities in “Podunk” won’t make national news; it’s just a “fact of life”.
The hypocrisy is disturbing.
John, please tell us why republicans blame the issue of mass shootings on “mental health issues” and then consistently vote against any efforts to fund it.
https://truthout.org/articles/205-republicans-vote-against-bill-to-expand-school-mental-health-services/
And how exactly do lax gun laws that allow anyone to purchase seriously powerful weapons without any background checks keep those weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people ?
Republicans have fought tooth and nail to prevent funding for mental health, and ANY legislation that would make it harder for a mentally ill person to obtain a weapon.
If the republicans don’t want to do anything about controlling guns and blame the mentally ill, how about they do something about the mentally ill.
It’s a red herring argument that seems to play well to their mentally ill constituents that continually vote republican.
Fine— leave the guns alone— but if you do that, do something about the mentally ill.
I’m really sick of this ridiculous load of distractive and disingenuous diaper filling claptrap.
Swing the hammer enough times,Don, and you’ll hit the nail right on the head. Totally agree.
It’s good that students know that the day they turn 18 they can walk into a First Amendment Store and buy military assault rifles to defend themselves from the government by shooting random people.
Bravo to the students on the Vineyard, in Tennessee, and around the country. Meanwhile — the first of three Democratic legislators was just expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives by its Republican majority for supporting the student demonstrators there. The other two may have been expelled by the time you read this. Bravo to the “Tennessee Three” too. A lesson in how democracy works — and doesn’t. The NPR story: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168363992/tennessee-expel-3-democrats-house-vote
Better to walk out now than be carried out later in a body bag.
We need to protect our children.
We need to harden our schools.
Make them like prisons.
Bars on the windows, locked doors.
Automatic weapons at the ready.
Teach our children to love the Second Amendment.
I find it interesting that the radical “2 A” advocates will blame anything but the guns.
On her show on the evening of the Nashville shooting, Laura Ingraham stated the the shooter entered through an unlocked side door. She was apparently taking a page from Lyin’ flyin’ Ted, who blamed the Uvalde shooting on an unlocked door. But the fact is , (and Laura never recanted her lie) is that the shooter gained entry to the school by literally blowing the locked door out of its frame with a rapid burst of fire.
It’s not about the doors. In the Uvalde shooting, any one of the 376 heavily armed and armored police officers could have blown the hinges off of door to the room the shooter was in. They didn’t because they knew the power of the weapon they were facing.
The girl had serious mental health issues and stashed lots of ammo and guns at her parents house. Lots of people dropped the ball on this one.
Thanks for acknowledging her gender.
A baby step in the right direction.
Now, if you could just get over calling a 28 year old woman a “girl” .
By dropping the ball do you mean not requiring mental health evaluations of all persons attempting to purchase weapons designed to kill people?
Is it crazy to allow a person with serious mental health issues to purchase guns designed to kill as many as 20+ people a minute, even more with children.
Do you support requiring gun purchasers to be mentally screened?
This has been a busy past couple of weeks, but I think those of us who believe that the gun registration age needs to be increased to 21, mental health needs to be certified by a Dr. before a person can buy or own a gun, gun owners would be the responsible party if an under age person gets possession of the gun, as that indicates the owner didn’t secure and lock the gun away properly. Lastly, assault style weapons need to be BANNED to anyone other than those in the military on active duty. There is no need for assault style weapons to be in the hands of the general public.
Hunters who handle rifles and guns responsibly, follow the rules, and teach their children to respect firearms, are more than welcome to possess guns….l even benefit from gun owners as l enjoy a venison steak or wild goose dinner thanks to responsible gun owning friends.
Back to my opening line. After the many violent gun murders we’ve seen in recent days, and the backlash from the public, I have a strong feeling that the pages of history are about to turn, and some real effective gun legislation will become law in the near future. Angry right wingers can’t hold a whole country hostage now that responsible folks have woken up to the fact that something needs to be be done NOW to prevent any more killings!!!