SHS Students Stage Walk-Out to Protest Gun Violence

Students at SHS registered their feelings about school shootings and gun violence on Wednesday June 1, 2022. The Amnesty International Club organized a student walk-out and rally at 9 am to protest gun violence and according to reports, there were about 300 students in attendance.

Here is the text of the speech given by the student organizers, who made a banner, a petition, signs and buttons to raise funds.

Remarks:

Thank you all for joining us today as we take the time to remember the 21 innocent lives lost in the school shooting last Tuesday at Robb Elementary School. As a part of Amnesty International, we felt it was necessary that our club did something to stand up against what happened, as Amnesty’s overall purpose is to help those who cannot help themselves.

What happened in Uvalde Texas was absolutely unacceptable. Unfortunately, school shootings are not as uncommon as one would hope. Prior to Tuesday, there had been at least 77 incidents of gunfire on school grounds within this past year alone, resulting in 14 deaths and 45 injuries. We’ve been here before. This isn’t the first time Scarsdale students have taken a stand against gun violence in a walkout. Just a few years ago, students held a walkout for the shooting at Sandy Hook as well as one for the shooting at Parkland right on these very school grounds. When is enough, enough?

While shootings that take place in schools are especially concerning, any gun-related incident creates more hate and less safety in our society. On May 14th, an 18 year-old man, barely older than most of us here, brought an AR-15 into a grocery store, killing 10 people and injuring 3 more. What’s even more disturbing is that he live-streamed the whole event, proud of the horrific damage he caused. Because of this event, the New York History Regents Exam was canceled, due to parts of the test that may have caused trauma following the shooting. The Regents Exam was supposed to be today for the Juniors here. The shooter’s intent wasn’t to affect students and schools, yet he did. Any shooting or violent incident like this affects so many aspects of society, making people feel unsafe in their day to day life. “In a number of other countries—notably New Zealand and Norway—a single mass shooting has been enough to force widespread change.” Look at New Zealand for instance. Only a week after a mass shooting occurred in New Zealand in March 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced sweeping gun control reforms. After that point, gun owners were required to sell their weapons back to the government and over 60,000 firearms were sold back to the government. About a year later in June 2020, the nation introduced additional gun laws meant to track the buying and selling of weapons and ban certain guns.

One aspect that is most upsetting about the way that gun violence issues are handled in America is that, in America, any adult is able to access arms/weaponry that have been used during wartime, often without any thorough background check. In the most recent incident in Uvalde, two AR-15 style rifles and 1,600 rounds of ammunition were acquired on one occasion. And no suspicion was raised. Even after the horrific incident, Marty Daniel, the store owner of ‘Daniel’s Defense Guns’, the store where the attacker in the incident acquired these weapons, continues to stand firmly in his opinion that “all firearms laws that limit the rights of law-abiding citizens are unconstitutional.” Marty, along with many other Americans throughout the nation, believe that any legislation, even legislation that would require thorough background checks for anyone purchasing firearms, should not be implemented. This is the problem. In our world, everything is so split. However, if we want to ensure the safety of students in learning environments, we need compromise. We need to take safety measures to ensure that anyone purchasing firearms does not have mal intent.

Currently there are three pieces of legislation in Congress that have yet to be passed that would address gun violence and create stricter regulations for the purchasing of guns:

1. Universal Background Checks
2. Ethan’s Law, which promotes the safe storage of guns, and
3. Break the Cycle of Violence Act which would provide federal grants to communities for evidence-informed community violence intervention and prevention programs designed to interrupt cycles of violence.

Members of Amnesty International have written up a petition that we will send to government officials urging them to pass these three pieces of legislation. We have printed out copies for you all to read, as well as pieces of paper for you to sign your name if you are in support of this petition. We additionally are selling pins and the proceeds will go towards supporting the families in Buffalo and Uvalde. Furthermore, the sheet you were given while you were walking out contains QR codes with verified links to donate to the families in both Buffalo and Uvalde and a link to a petition to urge Congress to implement more background check regulations.

Alexandra Simon (president)
Sophia Garcia (vice president)
Ally Scheffler (secretary)
Eva Gibney (treasurer