Student-led anti-gun campaign gains support

RIDGEFIELD — A highschooler fed up with congressional inaction on gun safety policy has called for a national high school walkout — an effort that gained 65,000 supporters in four days.

The call by Ridgefield 15year-old Lane Murdock for a day of protest and solidarity on April 20 is one of several youth-inspired movements for gun safety following the Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school by a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle.

“When I heard about the news in Florida, I thought to myself, ‘That’s kind of the norm in American culture, and that’s not OK,’ ” Murdock said Monday. “So I decided to make my petition and get a movement started.”

Murdock was referring to the killing of 14 students and three staff members last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. — the deadliest school shooting in America since 2012, when a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook School.

Two other days of youth-led civil disobedience are planned next month — a nationwide school walkout on March 14 and a march on Washington, D.C., 10 days later, organized by survivors of the Feb. 14 massacre.

Sarah Clements, a Newtown college student whose mother survived the Sandy Hook shootings, is helping to organize the national walkout on March 14.

Clements said the rise of student activism is happening now because of work that began after Sandy Hook in 2012 by nonprofit groups such as Moms Demand Action for Gun Violence Prevention, which help give structure to student anger.

“Young people are using their righteous anger about what happened to their friends,” Clements said. “I know very well that feeling of anger after something like this happens so close to you. This is the only way these students know how to heal, plus they are very skilled at using social media.”

Ridgefield’s Murdock, who placed her petition online with the campaign platform change.org, saw her appeal grow by tens of thousands in just a few days.

“There has been too much complacency on the part of politicians when it comes to gun violence,” Murdock says in the online appeal. “High school students across the U.S.A, the way to fight back is here.”

School superintendents across the Danbury area said Monday they were aware of students sharing messages of walkouts on social media, and had not yet discussed how to respond with administrators.

Brookfield schools Superintendent John Barile said talks are already planned between high school administrators and student leaders on Wednesday.

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS Students protest against gun violence outside of the White House just days after 17 people were killed in a shooting at a south Florida high school on Monday in Washington, D.C.