Students in New York City walked out of their schools on Thursday to protest mass shootings that have come in rapid succession around the country, joining a national protest to end gun violence.
Protestors spoke of their outrage over the recent shootings in Buffalo and Texas, the latter of which occurred in an elementary school and killed 19 children, in addition to two adults. According to an analysis of mortality data by the New England Journal of Medicine, firearms may now be the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S.
“I’m not going to sit here and stand for a school getting shot up,” said 16-year-old Natalie Tyrell, who walked out of her earth science class at Chelsea CTE High School in Manhattan. “Because it makes me feel unsafe in a way, and everyone’s going to be unsafe. I feel like everyone should have a sense of, ‘This is not right’ — and not just sit there, not doing anything about it.”
Barely a week before the Texas shooting, a gunman in Buffalo opened fire in a supermarket that belonged to a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people. It is being investigated as a hate crime.
Tyrell was among a few dozen students who gathered with fellow Chelsea CTE students in a nearby plaza, just after noon. She said politicians weren’t doing enough to address mass shootings, “because it’s still happening.” She said she felt unsafe at the thought of potentially getting shot in school.
Tyrell’s unease was shared by several other protestors who spoke to Gothamist, though one student said he had become “desensitized” when asked how he felt being in a school building after the Texas shooting.
One block south on Sixth Avenue, students marched to a drumbeat alongside teachers protesting gun violence, chanting “no more guns” and “stop the violence.”
“The way I see it, it seems the U.S. is more in favor of their guns than their people,” said Hamlet Peña-Delacruz, a 17-year-old student at Chelsea CTE High School.
The shooting in Uvalde, Texas is one of several school shootings to occur in recent years and the second-deadliest school shooting in the United States. It is among a string of mass shootings in the country’s recent history, each prompting calls for reforms to gun policy that only seem to stall in Washington.
“This country — it feels like they don’t do anything about it,” said Nahzir Davis, an 18-year-old Chelsea CTE student. “A mass shooting happens, and there’s protests, there’s anger, there’s talks about debate, and then nothing happens, and then a mass shooting happens again. It’s a whole loop.”
