To mark the one-month anniversary of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people, students nationwide walked out of their classrooms to remember the victims and call for an end to gun violence.
At Las Cruces High School, students held a moment of silence for 17 minutes, one minute to honor each of the victims. Junior Angelica Avalos said seeing hundreds of her classmates show up to support the movement means the world to her and shows her she isn’t alone.
“There’s only a few people around the school who have spoken up about anything like this and for there to be an event to see even more people than I had anticipated come out today meant the world to me because it means people care. Even if it’s not here, even if it’s in Florida, people still care,” Avalos said.
Avalos has a personal connection to gun violence. She said her distant cousin was one of the two students killed in the Aztec High School shooting last December.
“Although I didn’t know her well, that was still my blood spilt that day and that was very hard for me, personally,” Avalos said. “Just because you never realize how big the impact is until it impacts you and that day just changed my world. It changed my whole outlook on gun violence on everything. It changed how I felt about coming to school every morning.”
Not everyone held signs with messages like “#NoMore” and “#Enough.” A group of students carried signs supporting the 2nd Amendment. Junior and NRA member Denny Atchley said banning guns won’t make help make schools safer.
“They’re going to try to push their beliefs that guns should be banned, which is a perfectly fine belief. That’s their belief and we respect that. But we also want to make sure that our belief is respected as well and the fact that we’re not going to sacrifice the 2nd amendment because they think it’ll make schools safer,” Atchley said.
Avalos said she understands the issue goes deeper than guns and supports stronger background checks and spreading awareness for mental illness. She also supports her classmates’ right to counter-protest.
“They have the exact same rights we do and they have the right to speak their mind. I’m not saying that we should take guns away. I don’t believe that. I just believe that they should be harder to get,” Avalos said. “I believe they have their opinions and we have ours even if they don’t exactly line up. I feel we could come to an agreement somewhere in the center.”
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