Students across the country continue to do what they can to protest our country’s absent gun safety laws and regulations. Walkouts have sprung up everywhere and deservedly so. These children are on the front line of the NRA’s firearm manufacturing business model. According to the St. Louis Dispatch, around 200 Riverview Gardens High School students in Bellefontaine Neighbors, Missouri, walked out Tuesday morning in protest.
“There’s no reason a 19-year-old boy should’ve been able to purchase an AR-15,” said Kenidra Woods, a 17-year-old junior who helped organize Tuesday’s protest. She was referring to Nikolas Cruz, the suspect charged with killing 17 people in a Parkland, Fla., school shooting. The shooting has launched other walkouts across the country aimed at stricter gun control.
Sounds reasonable to me. There’s a civics lesson here for our country’s legislators and also Riverview Gardens officials, who told students that not only would they be barred from returning to classes on Tuesday, they will also not be allowed to ride home on school buses.
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Students were told this despite claims by the district administrator supervising the walkout that Riverview Gardens supports students’ First Amendment rights to protest.
“The district stands on allowing students to use their voices,” said Chaketa Riddle, assistant superintendent of schools, who was watching the students’ off-campus protest.
No. No, the district doesn’t stand for that at all, it seems. I will be honest with you, not allowing the students back into the classrooms in order to keep from “disrupting” ongoing classes is something you can argue—though I would argue that people busting into classrooms shooting people dead is considerably more “disruptive”—but not allowing them their school bus rides home is criminal. That’s a safety issue.