Denver metro area high school students rally for gun safety 1 week after Evergreen High School shooting
Several hundred students in the Denver metro area rallied at and marched around the Colorado State Capitol one week after a shooting at Evergreen High School.
Many wore red and white shirts that read "students demand action," and held signs that read the same or had phrases like "we stand with Evergreen," and "no more silence, end gun violence."
"There's just a lot of exasperation within our community and in our generation surrounding all these horrific acts of gun violence that have really plagued our country and especially our state," Norah Krause, a senior at Denver East High School, told CBS News Colorado at the State Capitol on Wednesday.
Krause mentioned several mass shootings in Colorado, including the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, and the 2021 King Soopers shooting in Boulder, "especially with Evergreen being added to the list last week."
She said reducing and preventing shouldn't be a partisan or political issue because of the impact it has on so many people.
"Gun violence doesn't care about ideology, and so gun violence prevention needs to be a bipartisan movement that everyone gets involved in," Krause said.
In addition to Krause, there were over 200 students representing Denver East, Denver South, Cherry Creek, Regis Jesuit, and George Washington high schools, as well as Denver School of the Arts.
"Since my freshman year, I've protested, I've pleaded, I've advocated, I've talked to lawmakers, and I've begged for change, and I'll be honest, I'm exhausted," Diego Holguin, a senior at George Washington High School, said to the crowd. "Why do we have to come here year after year? Why do we have to convince people that opposing gun violence is even up for debate?"
They were part of a march organized by the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which was started in the wake of the 2013 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Students Demand Action is a branch of that group started after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
In addition to the students, state lawmakers were in attendance at the rally, including Democratic state Rep. Lindsay Gilchrist, whose district includes Denver, and Democratic state Sen. Tom Sullivan, whose district includes Arapahoe and Douglas Counties, and whose son Alex Sullivan was killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting.
"Everyone has talked about 'thoughts are not enough. Thoughts and prayers are not enough,'" Gilchrist said at the rally. "I want to extend our thoughts and our prayers to Evergreen and I want to extend our voice and our advocacy. We are going to do both. Thoughts and prayers are not enough and we need to commit to policy change."
Multiple school walkouts across the state also took place Wednesday afternoon, including at Morey Middle School in Denver, Conifer High School and Columbine High School in Jefferson County. They were scheduled one week down to the minute of the start of the shooting at Evergreen High School, where a 16-year-old shot and injured two students before killing himself.
In Conifer, students marched from the school out to Highway 285. At Morey, students marched from the Capitol Hill neighborhood to the capitol. Students at Columbine High School walked out to the Columbine shooting memorial in Robert F. Clement Park.