National walkout day: Thousands of students rally across US to demand action on gun control

Thousands of students across the US have walked out of their classrooms to attend protests, rallies and silent sit-ins as part of an unprecedented call for action against gun violence exactly one month after a school massacre in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead.

Students from more than 3,000 schools took to the streets from Washington to Los Angeles and from New York to Parkland, amplifying their message through their burgeoning grassroots movement sparked by the attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

At Brooklyn Borough Hall in New York City, students, parents, and teachers from all grade levels lined massive stone steps, crowding into the courtyard below. Student speakers boomed outrage and grief for a problem that has a growing body count – both in and out of schools.

Between the cheers, their message: enough is enough, we do not need another shooting to know that something needs to be done.

“We hear about this every day. Ever since I was a child, I remember hearing about Columbine, I remember hearing about Sandy Hook [in 2012] – I was in 7th grade – and now I’m a senior, and this is still happening. I really don’t know why it is still happening,” Nande Trant, a 17-year-old senior in Brooklyn, told The Independent. “It needs to stop.”

In Boston, students ignored the fact that many schools were closed thanks to snow and marched through the city anyway. In Los Angeles there was a sit-in at one school, just one of the ways the victims of the Parkland shooting were honoured, while at a school in Virginia, 11-year-old organisers gave out hand-drawn press packs to journalists.

In Congress, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation to help provide assistance to school schools and local law enforcement, while hundreds protested outside. The bill would authorise federal grants, totalling $50m a year, to fund training, anonymous reporting systems, threat assessments, intervention teams and school and police coordination. It passed the bill by a vote of 407-10, sending it to the Senate for consideration.

However, the bill falls short of the broader measures President Donald Trump had previously thrown his support behind. After saying he would advocate for measures like improved background checks, raising the age restrictions for buying semi-automatic rifles – one of which was used in Parkland – from 18 to 21 and taking weapons from people who pose a security threat, the President has settled on approaches the White House says are a more realistic fix.

While polls show that a majority of Americans support many of those more robust actions, Mr Trump released a gun reform plan on Sunday that dropped all those policies from his action plan, and instead focused on encouraging states to let teachers carry guns. Pressure from gun control groups like the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) and their staunch opposition to raising age limits, seems to have played a part, although the White House has denied this.

"The President, as you know, doesn't have the ability to just create federal law, and he would need a number of other individuals to come together to make that happen," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said earlier this week, amid criticism that Mr Trump had retreated on his gun control statements. "So what he is pushing forward are things that can immediately be accomplished."

Meanwhile, the Florida Legislature has pushed forward with its own legislation to address the issue, only to run straight into a lawsuit from the NRA. Gov Rick Scott, a pro-gun politician with the highest rating from the NRA, signed a bill into law last week that would raise the age required to buy a firearm, attracting the lawsuit from the gun lobby group just an hour later, citing Second and Fourteenth Amendment concerns.

"You see a lot of these politicians have donations form the NRA, and they don't do anything about guns," Abe Rothstein, a 15-year-old freshman at Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn and organiser at the rally there, told The Independent. Abe said he has been inspired by the Parkland organisers, and that he feels that he needs to stand up to tell politicians that there's a price to pay for taking that money. "The fact fact that the NRA is suing the state of Florida over age limits ... They are the reason why a lot of people have access to guns."

Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Director of the FBI David Bowdisch said authorities will never know if any investigative work would have prevented the shooting, “but we clearly should have done more.”

The FBI has acknowledged it receive separate tips related to the accused shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, who has been changed with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.

Mr Bowdich said the tips occurred on 25 September 2017 and on 5 January. He said he does not know why the "very explicit" tip from January was not forwarded to local law enforcement.

As the Senate heard about a potential failure in the US intelligence agency's response to potential threats, students on Wednesday continued their fight to get guns out of the equation, rallying outside of the White House and in the streets of New York, and crowding into school parking lots or into marches in communities across the country.

In Parkland, thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school American football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences. Ty Thompson, the school's principal, called for the “biggest group hug”, and the students obliged around the 50-yard line.

At an affiliated protest in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, students there shared a message of love, forming a heart on their football field the width of 80 yards. A Snapchat post from that same school showed students placing a Magnolia tree on the field, which they called a "Tree of Hope".

"This Magnolia tree represents the voices of our generation. As the tree grows in size, our voices grow in volume and strength," a note placed next to the tree read. "The tree will live for many years and our voice will live on, sparking change so tragedies like Parkland never happen again. We are the future."

Back in New York, students said they saw themselves in the students who have inspired their peers across the country.

“Seventeen people lost their lives for no reason. Those kids, they were seniors, I’m a senior, I’m 17 – that could have happened to me. One day I could leave home and never come back,” Ana Marinez, a 17-year-old senior in Brooklyn, told The Independent. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. It’s insensible that people are just leaving their homes and never coming back to see their families ever again. This shouldn’t be an issue.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who attended Wednesday’s rally, said the NRA should take note of who the students and activists across the country resemble. There's something eerily familiar about the energy he is seeing, he said.

“We have not seen this anywhere since the Civil Rights Movement,” Mr Adams told The Independent. “It’s clear, and loud, and the question that is looming over America,” he said. “Is this the USA or the NRA?”