Where Is the Never Again March
Salt LAKE Metropolis — Abena Bakenra has fabricated it a addiction to scan every classroom she's in for the all-time hiding place.
It's not something she's proud of, but information technology is what she'due south come up with to go on her sanity when mass shootings keep happening in American schools.
"Fright no longer has a place in our schools," the W High School senior told a crowd of thousands gathered at the Utah State Capitol Saturday for the pupil-led "March for Our Lives."
Protesters assemble exterior the country Capitol during the "March for Our Lives" effect in Salt Lake City on Sat, March 24, 2018.
Jacob Wiegand, Deseret News
The move, calling for stricter gun laws, rose out of support for victims and survivors at the unsuspecting Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School in Parkland, Florida, where a lone gunman killed 14 students and 3 faculty members on February. 14. Students take spoken out against local and federal politicians saying, #Plenty is enough.
A month later on the shooting, students at schools across the country, including thousands in Utah, staged a walkout, formally organized by the Women'south March Network.
"Later on the walkout, we march on," read one sign carried by a Utah participant.
Slader Radmall, sixteen, a student at Spanish Fork Loftier Schoolhouse, and other protesters flash peace signs during the "March for Our Lives" rally in Salt Lake City on Sat, March 24, 2018. Thousands of protesters marched from West Loftier School to the land Capitol to abet for stricter gun control laws.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Utah's capital city march and rally was just one of well-nigh 850 demonstrations held simultaneously all over the earth. Salt Lake police judge viii,000 people attended the event, which began at West High School and concluded at the state Capitol.
About one,000 attended a separate but similar outcome, the "March Before Our Lives" rally, crossing the same route to defend their Second Amendment rights, but also to show that they want change in the course of more secure schools.
Protesters gather for the pro-gun "March Before Our Lives" result across the street from W High School in Common salt Lake City on Sat, March 24, 2018. The pro-gun march immediately preceded the "March for Our Lives" rally, which called for stricter gun command.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
"We want to show that gun owners are peace-loving people, likewise," said local YouTube activist, "NutnfancyProject" creator Richard Hewitt. "We're not extremists. Nosotros're Americans."
Hewitt, a retired U.S. Air Strength colonel, said part of the trouble with erratic gunmen, especially in schools, is created by broken or dysfunctional families. He likewise supports arming teachers.
The students chanted "Books, not bullets," "This is what republic looks like," "Thoughts and prayers are not enough" and "Never again" every bit they marched to the Capitol and filled the steps earlier the rally. Their bright blue "March for Our Lives" T-shirts resonated in the afternoon sun.
Gun rights activists, some of whom carried curtained or openly carried weapons, donned black and some were in camouflage. Many of them carried American flags or Gadsden flags created for the American Revolution, which read, "Don't tread on me." They held their own rally, organized by the Utah Gun Substitution, at the north side of the state Capitol, cheering emphatically for those who chose to speak at the open mic.
"Nosotros're all office of the militia," said Kevin Wilson, of Saratoga Springs. He said tragedies, like the almost contempo one in Parkland, frequently incite fearfulness in people who then assume they have to do something and "make emotional decisions."
"We all know a gun is the reply to a bad guy with a gun," Wilson said.
"March for Our Lives" participants rallied for background checks on all gun purchases, a await flow between purchase and pickup of a gun, a ban on bump stocks and sales of war machine-grade attack weapons — not necessarily the handguns and rifles that are owned by the majority of gun owners in Utah and the Us.
Ermiya Fanaeian, 17, a student at Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts, joins others in the "March for Our Lives" rally in Salt Lake Urban center on Sabbatum, March 24, 2018. Thousands of protesters marched from W Loftier School to the state Capitol to advocate for stricter gun control laws.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Expand"We don't wish to deprive you of your fetishism for your menacing weapons," said Ermiya Fanaeian, a educatee at the Common salt Lake School for the Performing Arts.
In Park City, community members marched on Main Street. 3 students from Parkland, Florida, who are in the area on spring break, attended the march and shared their stories.
"What we went through, no one should ever have gone through," said McKenna Pfahl. She said seeing people march in Utah is "so empowering. It's amazing."
"They're one of us, and that could've been them," she said. "I call up it's really gonna brand a difference in this."
The three students hold they have a responsibility to try to make a change. "We've lost our classmates," Pfahl said. "We're not going to stop."
More than 500 people of all ages marched to the St. George city offices. Alicia Walker Ferree attended the southern Utah march with her husband and said information technology felt like a march from the 60s and 70s.
"Anybody was enthusiastic and yelling. … Information technology was extraordinary," she said. "I take eight grandchildren … five of them are now in public schools. And I merely can't imagine what it would be like to have a school shooting happen in i of their schools."
Though her feelings on gun command used to be different, she said all the school shootings inside the past few years have acquired her views to shift. "I do believe that there should exist tighter regulations," she added.
People like Ferree, who are hungry for modify, joined the national cause to "need that their lives and condom go a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today," co-ordinate to the "March for Our Lives" website.
Other events were held in Logan and Cedar City. The main march and rally in Washington, D.C. brought out hundreds of thousands of people.
Suzanne Bounous, of Sandy, said the rally at the land Capitol is the first she'south ever attended.
Protesters assemble during the "March for Our Lives" event exterior West High School in Salt Lake City on Saturday, March 24, 2018.
Jacob Wiegand, Deseret News
"I was scared when my ain children were in school and I'll be nervous for my grandchildren that I'll hopefully have when they go to school," she said, calculation that it was enough to bring her — an avid hunter and rifle possessor — out on Saturday.
"I can't believe the (National Burglarize Association) is decision-making the safety in this land," Bounous said. She supports more rigorous licensing procedures and teaching offerings and said her voting will be influenced by those ideas.
In early March, Florida lawmakers passed a bill that increases the minimum age for buying rifles to 21 in that country, institutes waiting periods and background checks for all purchases, bans some potentially violent or mentally unstable people from possessing guns and creates a program to hire boosted school police officers and arm some school employees.
The NRA is challenging the constitionality of Florida'southward new law, saying eighteen- to 21-twelvemonth-olds are classified as adults and take rights.
Utah lawmakers were abuzz after the shooting in Florida and scrambled to get something on the table to lull local fears. Rep. Steve Handy, R-Layton, proposed a nib that would've made information technology possible for a family or cohabitants of a potentially violent person to get a protective order or go their weapons taken away. He called it an attempt to notice "some kind of residuum in our lodge" so that kids and teachers wouldn't accept to worry.
The bill was heavily questioned by and opposed by both the NRA and the Utah Shooting Sports Council, and it did not make it out of a committee hearing.
The Utah Legislature did agree to study the bug brought up during the recent session, including increasing the age requirement to purchase assault rifles and confiscation of artillery when certain red flags come up upwardly, among others. The Utah School Condom Coalition was created, intending to meet between sessions and come up with recommendations to make Utah schools safer.
Funding was fabricated available to utilize more counselors in simple schools throughout the state. And several districts already employ their own security forces at schools.
Orem High School student Levi Rodas said taking guns abroad "volition non stop that kind of violence." He doesn't support changing the Second Subpoena just considering people are afraid.
Pro-gun protesters join "March Before Our Lives" participants in Salt Lake Urban center on Saturday, March 24, 2018. The pro-gun march immediately preceded the "March for Our Lives" rally, which called for stricter gun control.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
"It's amazing how much fear can control a person when they're uneducated," he said. His father, Harry Rodas, was carrying ii handguns at the rally Sabbatum and said, "We have to let people know that our view is non a minority view."
He said banning guns would have the aforementioned effects that banning drugs has had.
"It is e'er the promise that none of us take to use (our weapon)," the elderberry Rodas said. "Information technology's always a last-ditch effort. No one carries a gun lawfully with the intent of being a murderer."
Today's loftier schoolers were "just kids" when the mass shooting happened at Columbine High Schoolhouse in Colorado 20 years ago, said Orem High student Natalie Reese. She said they're ready to human action — in response to that and all the other shootings that have happened in schools since and so.
"If our politicians won't exercise anything to protect us, we'll exercise it ourselves," she said. Now, they are quondam enough to vote.
"Watch out," Natalie said. "We're coming for you. We are what we've been waiting for."
Kory Rowe and his children, Macy, 15, and Brody, 12, of West Hashemite kingdom of jordan, get together for the "March for Our Lives" rally exterior Due west Loftier School in Table salt Lake Metropolis on Sabbatum, March 24, 2018. Thousands of protesters marched from West Loftier School to the state Capitol to advocate for stricter gun command laws.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
The teens encouraged their peers and the crowd to register to vote and vote to "create a better tomorrow."
"We accept begun our fight, and it is our fight," said Westward Loftier student Elizabeth Honey. "At that place is no greater motivation than the outrage of seeing kids simply like us shot and killed in their own classrooms."
"After that, we demand y'all to protect us with your wallets … and, more than annihilation, we need you to believe in us," she said. "Another generation of students cannot go to school in fear."
Contributing: Ashley Imlay
Source: https://www.deseret.com/2018/3/24/20642722/never-again-thousands-in-utah-rally-for-gun-reform-safer-schools
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