Tag Archives: Gun Control

Students to walk out across United States in call for gun reform

People visit the Columbine memorial after teens kicked off a voter registration rally, a day ahead of the 19th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., April 19, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

By Keith Coffman

LITTLETON, Colo. (Reuters) – Thousands of students across the United States will mark the 19th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School on Friday 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 are expected to walk out of class at 10:00 a.m. local time, organizers say. They have been asked to wear orange, a color that has come to represent the movement against gun violence, and to observe a 13-second silence in honor of the victims killed at Columbine.

“This movement is here to stay. No more excuses. We want solutions,” organizers said on Thursday on Facebook.

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

The second deadliest public school shooting in U.S. history took place in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, leaving 17 dead. The shooting set off a national student movement calling for an end to gun violence and tighter gun restrictions.

“We can end the daily bloodshed in our country, and we can make history while doing it,” an organizer of Friday’s walkout, Max Cumming, wrote in an open letter to young Americans.

“We can rise up together and declare, with one ringing voice, that the age of national indifference towards the ever-growing death toll is over. We can change America forever, all before we reach 20 years of age.”

Cumming is a senior at Ridgefield High School in Connecticut, near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where a mass shooting in December 2012 killed 26 young children and adults.

The walkouts, speeches and drive to sign up voters on Friday are aimed at pressuring U.S. politicians to enact tighter restrictions on gun sales in the run-up to November’s mid-term congressional elections.

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

Columbine has not held classes on April 20 since the massacre, a district spokeswoman said, so there would be no walkout at the school. Students were encouraged to take part in community service.

The latest national rally comes more than a month after tens of thousands of students from some 3,000 schools participated in the #ENOUGH National School Walkout to demand that lawmakers seek tighter gun control regulations.

It also follows “March For Our Lives” rallies in cities across the United States on March 24 that were some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations in decades, with hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters taking to the streets to demand tighter gun laws.

Dudley Brown, president of the Colorado-based National Association for Gun Rights, said the gun-control movement seeks to have the government take away rights.

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

(Editing by Catherine Evans and Bernadette Baum)

U.S. judge upholds Massachusetts assault weapons ban

FILE PHOTO - AR-15 rifles are displayed for sale at the Guntoberfest gun show in Oaks, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday upheld a Massachusetts law banning assault weapons including the AR-15, saying the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of Americans’ right to bear firearms does not cover them.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston ruled that assault weapons and large-capacity magazines covered by the 1998 law fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment’s personal right to bear arms.

He also rejected a challenge to an enforcement notice Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey issued in 2016 clarifying what under the law is a “copy” of an assault weapon. Healey announced that notice after a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The decision released on Friday came amid renewed attention to school shootings, gun violence and firearms ownership after a gunman killed 17 students and faculty at a Florida high school in February, prompting a surge of gun control activism by teenage students.

In a 47-page ruling, Young cited former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who died in 2016, as having observed that weapons that are most useful in military service may be banned. Young said the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle was such a weapon.

He acknowledged arguments by plaintiffs including the Gun Owners’ Action League who noted the AR-15’s popularity in arguing the law must be unconstitutional because it would ban a class of firearms Americans had overwhelming chosen for legal purposes.

“Yet the AR-15’s present-day popularity is not constitutionally material,” Young wrote. “This is because the words of our Constitution are not mutable. They mean the same today as they did 227 years ago when the Second Amendment was adopted.”

Healey, a Democrat, in a statement welcomed the decision.

“Strong gun laws save lives, and we will not be intimidated by the gun lobby in our efforts to end the sale of assault weapons and protect our communities and schools,” she said.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment.

They had filed their lawsuit in 2017 and based part of their case on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Scalia authored in 2008 that held for the first time that individual Americans have a right to own guns.

The justices have avoided taking up another major gun case in the years since and in November refused to hear a similar case challenging Maryland’s 2013 state ban on assault weapons.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by James Dalgleish)

U.S. gunmaker Remington files for bankruptcy

FILE PHOTO: A man walks with his Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun during a pro-gun and Second Amendment protest outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., January 19, 2013. REUTERS/Joshua Lott/File Photo

By Tom Hals and Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) – Remington Outdoor Co Inc, one of the largest U.S. makers of firearms, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday to carry out a debt-cutting deal with creditors amid mounting public pressure for greater gun control.

The company’s chief financial officer, Stephen Jackson, said in court papers that Remington’s sales fell significantly in the year before its bankruptcy, and that the company was having difficulty meeting requirements from its lenders.

Remington, America’s oldest gunmaker, announced in February it would reduce its $950 million debtload in a deal that will transfer control of the company to creditors. The company plans to wrap up its bankruptcy as soon as May 3, according to court papers.

The filing comes after a Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school that killed 17 and spurred an intense campaign for gun control by activists.

The massacre led to huge U.S. anti-gun rallies by hundreds of thousands of young Americans on Saturday.

In some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations for decades, protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue. Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds, signing up thousands of the nation’s newest voters.

Major U.S. companies and retailers have taken some steps to restrict firearm sales.

Citigroup Inc <C.N> said last week it will require new retail-sector clients to sell firearms only to customers who passed background checks and to bar sales of high-capacity magazines.

Citi also said it was restricting sales for buyers under 21, a move adopted by other large retailers, while Kroger Co’s <KR.N> superstore chain Fred Meyer said it will stop selling firearms entirely.

CERBERUS TO LOSE OWNERSHIP

Cerberus Capital Management LP, the private equity firm that controls Remington, will lose ownership in the bankruptcy.

Remington’s creditors, which sources told Reuters include Franklin Templeton Investments and JPMorgan Asset Management, will exchange their debt holdings for Remington equity.

The creditors inked the debt-cutting deal prior to the Parkland shooting, and it is unclear if any have exited. The restructuring support agreement allows creditors to sell their holdings, but the buyer is bound by the deal.

One investor told IFR, a Thomson Reuters news provider, that his firm had contemplated buying the Remington loans that will be exchanged into equity, which were offered at as low as 25 cents on the dollar.

“We bowed out because we were uncomfortable,” he said.

After a Remington Bushmaster rifle was used in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut in 2012 that killed 20 children and six adults, Cerberus tried unsuccessfully to sell Remington, then known as Freedom Group.

Katie-Mesner Hage, an attorney representing Sandy Hook families in a lawsuit against Remington, said in a prepared statement that she did not expect the gunmaker’s bankruptcy would affect their case.

Remington and other gunmakers have suffered from slumping sales in the past year as fears of stricter gun laws have faded.

The chief executive of American Outdoor Brands Corp, maker of the Smith & Wesson gun used in the Parkland shooting, said on March 1 that some gun retailers reported increased sales after the Florida school shooting.

Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Gopakumar Warrier)

U.S. gun control movement pushing Congress to act: lawmakers

People take part in a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The youth-led U.S. gun control movement that flexed its public muscle with huge weekend rallies has already nudged Congress to enact minor firearms changes, but must remain active if it hopes to win more meaningful regulations, lawmakers said on Sunday.

The movement that erupted after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has generated a national conversation about gun rights and has chipped away at legislative gridlock on the issue, they said.

A protestor holds a sign during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Stro

A protestor holds a sign during a “March For Our Lives” demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

“The activism of these young people is actually changing the equation,” Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said a day after hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied in Washington.

Tucked into a $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress passed last week were modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and an end to a ban on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying the causes of gun violence.

“These are two things we could not have done in the past,” Kaine said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “But the active engagement by young people convinced Congress we better do something.”

The spending bill, which President Donald Trump signed on Friday, also includes grants to help schools prevent gun violence.

The Trump administration also took a step on Friday to ban the sale of bump stocks – devices that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns – that helped gunman Stephen Paddock massacre 58 people in Las Vegas in October.

A key focus of Saturday’s march on Washington, which was duplicated in 800 cities across the country and around the world, was an effort to turn emotion into political activism by registering participants to vote.

Americans will vote in November on the entire U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

Gun control advocates have called for universal background checks on people buying guns, bans on assault-style rifles such as the one used to kill 17 students and staff in Parkland, and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

Senator Mark Warner, another Virginia Democrat, declared in the wake of the student-led movement that he would now support bans on such rifles and magazines, which he had voted against in recent years.

“I think it’s time to change our positions and re-examine them,” Warner said on the CBS News “Face the Nation” program.

“I think this time it’s going different,” Warner said. “I think we can actually get it done.”

To win significant changes, lawmakers said the young gun control advocates need to maintain their drive in the face of powerful pro-gun lobbying by the National Rifle Association and those who see gun ownership as a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

A protestor holds a sign during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

A protestor holds a sign during a “March For Our Lives” demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

“If they don’t keep it up, those that want no change will just sit on their hands,” Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who formerly served in Congress, said on CNN.

Two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa, said over the weekend that while they supported gun control advocates’ right to protest, they opposed infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms.

Meanwhile, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum drew an angry response on social media for saying on CNN that, instead of agitating for change, students should “do something about maybe taking CPR classes” or take other training to respond to school shooters.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Paul Simao)

Buckets of rocks are Pennsylvania schools’ last defense against shooters

Students from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC, hold up signs with the names of those killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By David DeKok

HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday.

The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview.

“We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.”

Last month’s massacre of 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sparked fresh debate in the United States over how to prevent school shootings.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to join rallies in Washington and around the country on Saturday calling for tighter gun laws in “March for Our Lives” protests organized by the young survivors of the Parkland shooting.

Helsel said the idea of equipping classrooms with rocks grew out of his reading of the active-shooter defense program known as ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.

He first spoke about the rock buckets in testimony at the Pennsylvania state house in Harrisburg last week.

Helsel said his school board approved the rock buckets before they were put in the classrooms at the district’s five schools last fall. Parents in Orwigsburg, about 92 miles (148 km) northwest of Philadelphia, have been mostly supportive, he added.

“It is so unbelievably tragic that our society has come to a point where schools have to arm themselves with buckets of rocks to defend the against active shooters,” said Robert Conroy, director of organizing with gun-control group CeaseFirePA. “We should be talking about real reform of gun laws.”

(Editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler)

Americans want armed school guards and tighter gun laws: Reuters/ poll

Instructors work with participants on proper gun handling during a firearms training class at the PMAA Gun Range in Salt Lake City, Utah, July 1, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Urquhar

By Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – A majority of Americans, including Republicans, Democrats and gun owners want stricter laws on gun ownership and armed guards in schools, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national poll taken in early March.

Hundreds of thousands of students and their families are expected to march in cities across the United States on Saturday to demand stricter gun control, part of the response to a mass shooting at a Florida high school in February.

The following are some of the main findings of the poll:

GUNS IN SCHOOLS

About 75 percent of adults say they want armed security guards in school, with some 53 percent in favor of publicly funding gun classes for teachers and school personnel and 45 percent saying school staff should be encouraged to carry a weapon.

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL

A majority of Democrats and Republican voters support stricter gun laws, including 91 percent on both sides who say anyone with a history of mental illness should be banned from owning a gun. Eighty-four percent of Republicans believe people on the “no-fly” list should also be banned from gun ownership and 83 percent are in favor of expanding background checks. A majority of Republicans also say that assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips should be outlaw

GUN OWNERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO VOTE

Gun owners are more politically active than others, the poll found. They are more likely to be registered to vote, and they express more interest in voting in November’s midterm elections, when one third of U.S. Senate seats and all the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be decided.

Fifty percent of gun owners said they are certain to vote compared to 41 percent of people who do not own a gun.

GUN CONTROL IS AS IMPORTANT AS THE ECONOMY

Gun control is on a par with the economy as a top issue that will motivate U.S. voters in November, the poll found.

GUN OWNERS STILL APPROVE OF THE NRA

One in four adults say they own a gun and a majority of gun owners say they own more than one gun.

Nearly 60 percent of gun owners say that the National Rifle Association gun rights advocacy group is either doing “the right amount of work” or it “doesn’t do enough” to promote the interests of gun owners. About 30 percent say the NRA is “too aggressive” in promoting gun rights, according to the poll.

Separately, about 38 percent of gun owners also say they would like to vote in November for a congressional candidate who would oppose U.S. President Donald Trump and 39 percent say the country is on the wrong track.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2,389 U.S. adults was conducted between March 5-7 and has an overall credibility interval of 4-5 percent.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in NEW YORK; Editing by Leela de Kretser and Grant McCool)

School safety bill passes House, no action on gun control

Students from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC, hold up signs with the names of those killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives approved spending more money on metal detectors, locks and other school security measures on Wednesday, but took no steps to tighten gun control laws a month after a Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people.

While students marched nationwide for change on one of America’s most vexing social issues, lawmakers voted 407-10 for legislation to spend $50 million to $75 million per year from 2019 through 2028 on school security and safety training.

 

People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

No parallel measure was pending in the Senate, where a somewhat more ambitious bill was being debated, but prospects for meaningful gun control reforms in Congress remained remote in the face of stiff resistance from gun industry lobbyists.

“This bill, on its own, is not the kind of meaningful congressional action needed to address this crisis of gun violence,” Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in a statement.

“This must be a first step and it must be followed by a serious effort to pass legislation that expands background checks and bans military-style assault weapons,” he said.

It was not yet clear when the Senate would take up the House bill, which would not become law without Senate approval.

President Donald Trump applauded the House bill, the White House said, though it falls far short of broader gun control legislation he talked about shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The measure would not allow any of the funding to be used for arming teachers or other school personnel. The White House said the bill would be improved by lifting that restriction.

Since the Parkland massacre, student protesters have successfully lobbied for tighter gun controls in Florida. Hundreds of them gathered outside the Capitol to urge Congress to take action on placing new limits on firearms and gun sales.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) listens to testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) listens to testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

In the Senate is a bill to strengthen existing background checks of gun purchasers. It enjoys broad bipartisan support but has not been scheduled for debate.

Congressional aides said discussions were underway about folding the school safety and background check bills into a government funding bill that lawmakers want to pass by March 23.

Eleven organizations, including some gun control and law enforcement groups, wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urging passage this month of the background checks bill.

Since the Florida shooting, the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have considered measures to curb gun violence while trying to avoid crossing the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group, or threatening the right to bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Neither the House nor Senate bills address many of the gun control initiatives backed by students, teachers and families of shooting victims at the Florida school.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Katherine Posada, a teacher at the school, recounted the horror she experienced the day of the shooting and urged Congress to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle used by Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged in the murders.

“Some of the victims were shot through doors, or even through walls – a knife can’t do that,” Posada said. “How many innocent lives could have been saved if these weapons of war weren’t so readily available?”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Lisa Lambert, David Alexander and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Tom Brown)

Trump would sign bill on schools, guns about to pass House: statement

FILE PHOTO: President Donald Trump waves as he arrives to speak in support of Rick Saccone during a Make America Great Again rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is ready to sign legislation intended to curb school violence that was inspired by last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, and which the House of Representatives is poised to pass later on Wednesday.

In a statement released on Wednesday the White House said the legislation would help protect children and reiterated its support for arming teachers or other school personnel. It said the bill “would be improved by eliminating the restriction on the use of funds to provide firearms training for those in a position to provide students with appropriate, armed defense.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Republican, told reporters that the chamber would pass the legislation, which would authorize $50 million a year to help schools and law enforcement agencies prevent violent attacks, on Wednesday. But with the Senate considering other legislation this week and next, any gun legislation may not reach Trump’s desk before April.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Richard Cowan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Students launch walkout against gun violence in United States

A small group of anti-gun protesters hold a vigil outside the Vermont State

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Students walked out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday, waving signs and chanting their demands for tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by survivors of the deadly shooting spree at a Florida high school last month.

The #ENOUGH National School Walkout began at 10 a.m. EDT with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10 a.m. local time in western time zones, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14.

Students arrive for class at Columbine High School before participating in a National School Walkout to honor the 17 students and staff members killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Some students got in an early start. At Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, the color of the gun-control movement.

“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” read one sign, needling the rote response many lawmakers make after mass shootings.

In Parkland, students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field as law enforcement officers looked on.

The walkouts are part of a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack. Some of the survivors have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, and even met with President Donald Trump, to call for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“If our elected officials don’t take responsibility for their inaction on both sides of the aisle, then we are going to kick them out of office,” David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.

The students’ efforts helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age for buying any kind of gun was raised to 21 years from 18, although lawmakers there rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.

In Washington, however, plans to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.

A large crowd of students gathered and chanted slogans outside the gates of the White House. Trump, however, was out of town on a trip to California.

Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups are joining the walkouts, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the event’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.

Support has also come from the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom Inc <VIAB.O>, which said all seven of its networks, including MTV, would suspend programming at 10 a.m. in each U.S. time zone during the 17-minute walkout.

The protests took place a day after Florida prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Parkland attack.

The New York City Department of Education allowed students to participate if they submitted a signed permission slip from their parents.

But a few school districts around the country had warned against protests during school hours.

Administrators in Sayreville, New Jersey, told students that anyone who walked out of class would face suspension or other punishment, according to myCentralJersey.com.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York, Joe Skipper in Parkland, Florida, and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

Empty shoes, empty schools: U.S. gun law activists plan two days of theater

FILE PHOTO: Students from South Plantation High School carrying placards and shouting slogans walk on the street during a protest in support of the gun control, following a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Plantation, Florida, February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A makeshift memorial made up of 7,000 pairs of shoes took shape on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, as gun control activists dramatized the number of children killed in the United States by gunfire since the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.

The shoe demonstration comes a day before a massive nationwide walkout by students to demand tougher laws on gun ownership, part of a campaign that emerged after the killing of 17 students and staff at a Florida high school a month ago.

“This is really about putting the human cost of refusing to pass gun control at the doorstep of lawmakers,” said Emma Ruby-Sachs, deputy director of Avaaz, a U.S.-based civic organization that planned the shoe memorial. The Capitol is the home of the U.S. Congress.

Activists and volunteers gathered at dawn, placing 7,000 colorful pairs of donated children’s footwear side by side in a trapezoid shape to commemorate those who have died since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Dozens of people were seen standing in front of the shoes, holding large, black signs with the words “#NOTONEMORE” and “7000 KIDS KILLED” written on them.

Donors to the shoe monument include actresses Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler, and talk show host Chelsea Handler.

Wednesday’s #ENOUGH National School Walkout, organized by the activists who helped plan the Women’s March in Washington for the past two years, will begin at 10 a.m. local time (1400 GMT).

Students across the country will walk out of their classrooms for 17 minutes to commemorate the 17 victims who lost their lives in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The massacre was the deadliest school shooting since 20 children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook more than five years ago.

About 1,300 people below the age of 18 are killed by gunfire in the United States every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The walkout has won the support of many school districts and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union. More than 2,500 walkouts are scheduled across the country, according to the organizer’s website.

Some schools will allow students to participate and have encouraged them to exercise their free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A few have threatened to suspend students if they disrupt class by leaving.

“When students protest at schools, our school staff will respond appropriately and allow our students to be heard,” said Robert Runcie, superintendent for public schools for Broward County, Florida, where Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman is located.

Dozens of colleges and universities across the country, including at least three Ivy League schools, have said their application processes will not consider disciplinary action taken against high school students who engage in protests.

Tuesday’s shoe memorial is reminiscent of a monument on the Danube River near the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest commemorating thousands of people, including Jews, killed by fascists in the 1940s.

Many Canadian cities have marked the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Dec. 6 with similar “shoe memorials.”

(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Bernadette Baum)