Students in the US will remember victims of gun violence and push for firearms control in another wave of school walkouts.

The latest protests are planned for today, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting that left 13 people dead in Littleton, Colorado.

Organisers said more than 2,600 demonstrations were planned, from Maine to Hawaii.

Many students said they would wear orange and leave class at 10am before a moment of silence for victims of Columbine and other shootings.

It follows a surge of youth activism following the February 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Students near Washington plan to rally for gun control at the Capitol. At Columbine High School, classes are cancelled for a day of service. </s> Students demanding tougher gun laws walked out of classes across the United States on Friday, the 19th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School which left 13 people dead.

As thousands of teenagers held rallies from coast to coast, a shooting at a high school in Ocala, Florida, left one student wounded.

The Ocala Star Banner newspaper said a 19-year-old former student at Forest High School fired a blast from a shotgun into a locked classroom door, wounding a 17-year-old student in the ankle.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said the suspect, who was not identified, was quickly arrested.

Around the country, students marked the anniversary of the April 20, 1999 shooting at Columbine in Colorado, a massacre seen as the harbinger of an era of school violence.

"I feel like things have gotten worse these last few years," said Emma Corcoran, a 15-year-old from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland, at a rally in Washington. "Change needs to happen."

The protests have been galvanized by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 14 teens and three adult staff members were shot dead on February 14 by a troubled former classmate armed with an AR-15-style automatic weapon.

The Parkland students have spearheaded a grassroots campaign for gun control which included another school walkout on March 14 and nationwide rallies by hundreds of thousands of Americans on March 24.

"So proud of the #NationalSchoolWalkout and all of the students around the country who are standing up for positive change and demanding what we deserve," tweeted Cameron Kasky, a Parkland student leader. </s> Friday is the 19th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School that claimed the lives of 12 students and one teacher. A national school walkout is scheduled for tomorrow that could involve more than 2,500 schools. According to the event’s website, around 75 schools in Washington will be participating in the walkout, including Moses Lake High School.

Moses Lake experienced the horror of a school shooting just a few years prior to the Columbine tragedy on February 2, 1996, when 14 year old Barry Loukaitis killed his algebra teacher and two students at Frontier Middle School.

The April 20th walkout is scheduled to happen at 10:00 a.m. local time when students will observe a moment of silence for the Columbine victims. There may also be speeches or other kinds of rallies at each participating school.

Jason E. Glass, the Superintendent with Jeffco Public Schools and Columbine High School has asked Columbine students to participate in a day of service rather than join the National School Walkout on April 20th. Columbine students participated in the March 14 #Enough National School Walkout. </s> Today marked another National School Walkout to protest school gun violence — this one coincided with the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.

The current wave of activism among students around gun violence was spurred by the Parkland, Florida, school shooting earlier this year.

Listen in the player above to hear how some Louisville Collegiate students spent the day and how they feel about school security. </s> LITTLETON, COLORADO (Reuters) - Colorado teenagers will kick off a voter registration rally on Thursday ahead of the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre on Friday, when students across the United States plan to walk out of class to protest gun violence.

The Vote for Our Lives event in the Denver suburb of Littleton, home to Columbine High School, where 13 people were gunned down in 1999, will feature survivors of shootings -including the Feb. 14 massacre in Parkland, Florida - and other speakers, organizers say.

Student walk-outs have become part of an ongoing, youth-led movement to demand stricter gun control laws that emerged immediately after the attack by a gunman who slaughtered 17 people at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Friday's National School Walkout, which organizers say has drawn support from more than 2,600 schools and institutions, has three goals: to hold elected officials accountable, promote solutions to gun violence, and promote student participation in the political system, the organizers have said.

The protest is set to begin at 10 a.m. local time across U.S. time zones. Organizers have asked students not only to wear orange, the official color against gun violence, but also to observe a 13-second silence to honor those killed at Columbine.

The latest national rally will come more than a month after tens of thousands of U.S. students from more than 3,000 schools participated in the #ENOUGH National School Walkout to demand that policy makers seek tighter gun control regulations.

Activists have also 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.

On April 20, 1999, two teenagers rampaged through Columbine High School, fatally shooting 12 students and a teacher and wounding more than 20 others before killing themselves. </s> On Friday, at 10 a.m. local time, students across the country walked out of their classrooms to protest what they see as continuing inaction to combat gun violence.

The action, titled the National School Walkout, comes 19 years to the day of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado when 13 students were killed on April 20, 1999.

At the time, Columbine was the deadliest school shooting in modern U.S. history, but it has since been surpassed by the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people.

After the Parkland massacre, survivors organized a national action with a similar name: Enough! National School Walkout, which took place on March 14, a month after the shooting.

19 years ago today, these 13 people were killed at #Columbine High School in Colorado. Whether you are participating in the #NationalSchoolWalkout, or #DayOfService, remember these faces. This is why we fight. 19 years later, and this still happens. pic.twitter.com/qfkp6av9Hd — Sofie Whitney (@sofiewhitney) April 20, 2018

Unlike that walkout, where students left their classes for 17 minutes to commemorate the 17 Parkland victims, participants in Friday’s event left school for the day and will not return.

Although organizers of today’s protest weren’t alive during the Columbine tragedy, they see the shooting as a grim pivotal event that ushered in the epidemic of shootings across the country — and they are determined to put a stop to them.

Image zoom CNNTwitter

“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.”

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Students at Cooper City High School walked out of class on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre to form a heart on their football field for #NationalSchoolWalkout pic.twitter.com/GgnBVoDjXE — WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) April 20, 2018

“Keeping up the momentum is important,” Connecticut sophomore Lane Murdock, the student who conceived Friday’s walkout, told USA Today. “We saw that low after March for Our Lives” — the student-led series of demonstrations for gun violence prevention on March 24 — “but students aren’t quitting on this. Our generation is demanding change and won’t be ignored or swept under the rug.”

More than 2,600 National School Walkout events were planned around the country with tens of thousands of students expected to be involved, according to the event’s website. </s> LITTLETON, Colo., (Reuters) – Demanding an end to gun violence and tougher restrictions on firearm sales, thousands of students again walked out of classes across the United States on Friday in hopes of putting pressure on politicians ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Timed to coincide with the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, students left classes at midmorning, many waving placards with slogans including “I should be worried about grades, not guns,” and “Enough is enough.”

Organizers said students from more than 2,600 schools and institutions were scheduled to take part, but that was fewer than participated in a similar walkout last month. In some places, demonstrators even met with resistance from school administrators.

“Today is about being proactive and being empowered and really funneling all that energy and anger we have as young people into some productive change,” one of the student organizers, Lane Murdock of Connecticut, told Reuters.

Olivia Pfeil, a 16-year-old sophomore from a high school in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, held a sign bearing the names of mass shooting victims. “We’re expecting change or come next election cycle we will support politicians who are listening to the voices of the youth,” she said.

It was the second student walkout since the Feb. 14 massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the emergence of a national student movement to end gun violence and toughen restrictions on firearms sales.

Many of the demonstrators wore orange, a color that has come to represent the movement against gun violence. A 13-second silence was observed in honor of the 13 killed at Columbine.

At the Texas statehouse in Austin, about 1,000 students, many waving signs and chanting anti-NRA slogans, demanded stricter gun control measures.

“Because we can’t vote, this is the only way we can make our voices heard,” said Graeclyn Garza, a second-year student at McCallum High School in Austin, who waved a sign reading “Enough.”

Outside the White House, protesters sat in silence while they listened to the names of gun violence victims read aloud.

“It happened like 20 years ago,” said Ayanna Rhodes, 14, a student at Washington International School, referring to Columbine, “And we are still getting mass shootings in schools.”

Two gunman went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, leaving 12 students and a teacher dead before killing themselves in a massacre that stunned the nation. But since then, school shootings have become commonplace.

Even as students prepared for their protest on Friday morning, news broke that a 17-year-old student had been wounded in a shooting at a high school near Ocala, Florida. A suspect was arrested soon afterward, police said.

The latest gun violence unfolded about 225 miles (360 km)northwest of the Parkland high school, where two months ago a former student killed 17 people in the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.

Despite widespread revulsion over the school shootings, the issue of gun control remains sensitive in Colorado and across the country, where the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.

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

In some conservative school districts, administrators told students they could face disciplinary steps if they walked out.

In suburban Dallas, a dozen students dressed in orange chanted “End gun violence!” as they huddled in a parking lot across the street from North Garland High School.

Freshman Victoria Fierro, 14, said school administrators blocked the doors when about 50 students tried to leave, so a small group exited through a side door.

“They told us we would get in trouble if we walk out, and we told them it was a peaceful protest, we’re not causing any damage,” Fierro said. “This is over a serious topic that people are pushing aside.”

The principal declined to answer questions from Reuters.

It was not immediately clear whether Friday’s turnout matched those of earlier protests. More than a month ago, tens of thousands of students from some 3,000 schools participated in the #ENOUGH National School Walkout to demand tighter gun control regulations.

On March 24, “March For Our Lives” rallies in cities across the United States 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.

On the evening before the walk-outs, Colorado gun control activists rallied near Columbine High School.

Carlos Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior from Marjory Stoneman, traveled to Columbine for the anniversary and said he found a sense of solidarity in the outpouring of support.

“That’s the only thing that’s keeping us Douglas students alive right now: the distraction of fighting for our rights and advocating for our lives,” Rodriguez told Reuters.

There was no walkout on Friday at Columbine, which has not held classes on April 20 since the massacre. Students were encouraged to take part in community service instead. </s> Hundreds of students in the D.C. area and thousands more across the country plan to walk out of their classes Friday to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

Local students have chosen to organize a school walkout to call for tighter regulations on gun ownership, but school officials have issued mixed policies on it — the second student walkout for gun control in as many months.

Fairfax County schools issued a guidance letter to principals stating that staff could not restrict students’ right to freedom of speech, but those who leave school grounds “may be subject to discipline.” The statement said students would be permitted to leave with a signed note from their parents.

D.C. Public Schools also will allow parents to sign their children out of class, but principals warned in a letter to parents that “any student who leaves class will receive an unexcused absence for any periods they miss.”

Arlington County Public Schools Superintendent Patrick K. Murphy also warned parents in a letter in March that students who leave school Friday will be marked with “an unexcused absence unless parents provide written permission.”

However, Washington Leadership Academy — a D.C. charter school — is using the walkout as a field trip for its ninth-graders, who have been studying social movements like Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement.

“Our kids have been looking at this in a very two-dimensional context, reading articles and watching videos,” Jaishri Shankar, a ninth-grade teacher, told The Washington Times. “We had kids asking, saying, ‘We would love to participate in this.’”

Academy students will gather at school in the morning to take attendance, and the ninth- and 10th-graders will be able to leave together. Ms. Shankar stressed that participation is optional, but the school felt a duty to help student organizers make the trip a possibility.

“If we really want to walk the walk for building students to be ready to lives of public leadership, I think that starts at school,” the teacher said.

Students nationwide walked out of schools on March 14 to mark the one-month anniversary of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 students and adults were gunned down. The National School Walkout featured rallies calling for more and stricter gun control.

The walkout to mark the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, however, won’t include student protests at the Colorado school that changed how the nation viewed shootings.

Just as it has done every year since the April 20, 1999, shooting killed 12 students and a teacher, Columbine High School will be closed.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports. </s> New York: 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 10am with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10am local time in western time zones, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14.

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. </s> Students across the United States walked out of classes on Wednesday in a nationwide call for action against gun violence following the shooting deaths last month at a Florida high school.

Hundreds of students from Washington area schools gathered outside the White House chanting "Never again!" and "Enough is enough!" and holding signs reading "Protect People Not Guns."

At 10:00 am (1400 GMT), students in numerous cities held a moment of silence to honor the 14 students and three adult staff killed on Valentine's Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The "National School Walkout" was intended to last for 17 minutes, one for each victim.

But it quickly became apparent that many students at schools on the East Coast decided not to go to classes at all and to demonstrate instead.

The nationwide protest is being held one month to the day after Nikolas Cruz, a troubled 19-year-old former student at Stoneman Douglas, unleashed a hail of gunfire on his former classmates.

The event to honor those slain at Stoneman Douglas is also an act of protest against the firearms violence plaguing the United States, which has more than 30,000 gun-related deaths annually.

Organizers come from the same group behind the Women's March, which saw millions of demonstrators take to the streets in cities across the country in January 2017 to protest Donald Trump's White House inauguration.

Trump had momentarily signaled support for increasing restrictions on guns, but now stands accused of bowing to the powerful US gun lobby.
On the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, thousands of students across the United States walk out of school to protest against school shootings.