After the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland, Florida, students at MDI High School in Bar Harbor, Maine were
scheduled to have a routine lock-down drill, in which students practice
how to behave if their school is the site of a similar mass shooting;
these drills teach children to sacrifice themselves by distracting the shooter before they are murdered in order to give other students a few more seconds during which the police might arrive and kill the shooter.
The school principal decided to postpone the drill, and instead, 50-100
of these students staged a class walkout to demand gun-control, lining
the halls with signs bearing slogans like “Students safety before gun
owners rights” and “Put Senate on lockdown until students are safe”;
some teachers joined the protest.
The protest continued through the day and culminated with a solidarity
protest in front of the school that included parents and members of the
community.
Students across America are planning a mass walkout for gun control
on March 14. Most high-school seniors will be old enough to vote in the
2018 midterms, and almost current high-school students will be eligible
to vote in the 2020 elections. A new campaign called No NRA Money is devoted to electing politicians who do not take campaign funding from the NRA and “make the NRA politically radioactive.”
