Bay Area students join pro-gun walkout

Approximately 50 California High students participate in 16-minute ‘Stand for the Second’ demonstration

Students from at least one Bay Area high school took part in a nationwide walkout Wednesday dubbed “Stand for the Second,” an effort “to protect our natural rights that are enshrined in the Constitution,” with a handful of other schools reportedly participating.

About 50 students walked out of class at California High School in San Ramon around 10 a.m., spokeswoman Elizabeth Graswich of the San Ramon Unified School District said. They held signs, made a couple of speeches and returned to class after about 15 minutes, she said.

KTVU reported the number to be closer to 100.

“It was peaceful,” she said. “Very much so.”

A Tea Party Patriots website urged students to take part in the event and listed a handful of schools participating, including California, a Downtown College Prep Alum Rock in San Jose; College Park in Pleasant Hill, and Montgomery High in Santa Rosa.

“There is a lot of talk recently about the need to create new laws that would restrict access to firearms in order to make our schools safer,” the group’s organizers wrote on the Tea Party Patriots website. “But not a lot of attention has been given to those of us who want to protect our natural rights that are enshrined in the Constitution.

“That’s what the Stand for the Second is all about.”

At California, police staffing was normal and there never was a need to call in additional help, Graswich said.

“There are many things that we can to improve the safety of our schools without infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens,” a student leader said during the walkout.

The suggested time for the walkout was 10 a.m. Organizers encouraged students to leave class for 16 minutes.

Just after 10 a.m., administrators and students at Downtown College Prep Alum Rock said they had not heard of any protest or walkout at their school. The address listed on the Tea Party website did not match any of the Downtown College Prep charter school campuses but did indicate a walkout was scheduled for 3 p.m., during the final period of the day. Journalists from this news organization who went to the campus saw no such walkout.

“I did see it listed,” on the Tea Party website, said Ruth Schriver, chief operating officer for Downtown College Prep charter schools. “Usually we hear that things are going to happen.

“It’s not us or our location. I think somebody is mistaken.”

College Park principal Joe Alvarez declined to comment about the walkout when contacted by this news organization Wednesday morning and would not say whether the school was aware or prepared for it. Calls to the school in the afternoon went unanswered.

The event was reportedly organized by Will Riley, a high school senior from Carlsbad, New Mexico, who called for students to stage a walkout at their school for 16 minutes on May 2, 2018, in support of the Second Amendment.

Earlier this year, thousands of students across the Bay Area took place in multiple national walkouts to protest gun violence and rally for tighter firearm restrictions. Contact Mark Gomez at 408-920-5869 and Rick Hurd at 925-945-4789.