In Polk County, Florida, one student activist who is taking on the issue of gun control is Kala Tedder; she is a senior at George Jenkins High School. She’s also dual enrolled at Polk State College and is running for the Polk County School Board.
Tedder has contacted elected officials about the need for stricter gun control.
She’s also helping to organize a student walk-out on March 14. The Facebook event page says, “The students of George Jenkins High School, in honor of the victims of the Parkland tragedy, will be walking out of class on March 14th, 10am, for 17 minutes. We will be meeting in the courtyard. The hosts of the event will be creating signs with the names of each victim. The signs will include the tag #NeverAgain. ”
Listen:
Several thousand gun control advocates descended on Florida’s Capitol Wednesday, including about one hundred students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 students were killed on Valentine’s Day.
Here in Tampa, activists announced today that Blake High School students plan a walk-out on Friday to protest lawmakers’ inaction on gun violence. A press release says “As the school day comes to an end at 3 PM, students will march off campus and over to Curtis Hixon Park in Downtown Tampa.”
Students at high schools across the U.S. are staging walkouts to protest gun violence in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
A student from Leto High School wrote this to WMNF News on Wednesday:
“Hi my name is Kayla N and I am a 15 year old that attends Leto High School. I had participated in the walkout and protest that happened at my school today. I wanted to bring to your attention that our assistant principal had told students over the intercom before and after our protest that what we were doing would not bring change for the things we wanted. Many students at Leto felt very disrespected since we were standing up for what we believed in and were told that it would not work. I am using my guardians facebook account since I do not have one and I am being encouraged to stand up against gun violence. I just wanted to bring to your attention that we felt very intimidated at school to practice our first amendment rights.“
information from the Associated Press was used in this report
One Response to “Tampa Bay area students getting active on gun control”
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Does anyone know how many AR-15 series rifles are in the United States? Do you have any references that you could cite, if possible?
Seems as if there are many millions of law abiding owners in relation to a hand full of crazies, and in a country of 323 million I heard there are about 6-7 million AR-15 in the US? Sounds like another persecuted minority? Do we really persecute minorities for the actions of a few?
The world of people is made up of (Lt Col Dave Grossman) Sheep (your average person, no disrespect interned as they don’t like to fight and avoid conflict; nothing wrong with that).
Then there are the wolves who prey on the sheep (crazies, criminals, the Easter Bunny).
Then there are the sheep dogs who protect the vast majority not unlike first responders; they go towards the conflict in order to help or save others, – not because they like to fight. As one sheepdog said, if we don’t go, then who will?” Its a selfless view of life and humanity along the lines of the USAF motto simply: “Send Me” Why do these people go out and risk line and limb?. As Dave said, “they do it for love” of their fellow man and women who the may not even know. They should be respected and supported, in and out of public service
The simple fact of the matter is that Schools, theatres, public events etc are “soft targets” full of sheep; they are large “soft targets” that on the rare occasion attract wolves. Most events are enjoyed and only the rare ones attract a wolf. For those few occasions we need sheep dogs and having a cross section of teachers trained and armed makes perfect sense. Its not a mater of cost effective, its a matter of being practical as we never know where and when the rare wolf will strike and because of that these properly trained sheepdogs must be in an out of public service because we do not live in a police state
Timothy McVee struck with a truck bomb in Oklahoma and slaughtered over 160 men, women and children (there was also a daycare at the base of the Federal Building). As we learned the hard way in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan firearms are obsolete relatively speaking. Now the mass shooters are also using pipe bombs and booby traps. The hateful crazy in Norway also took out a city block with a bomb, but people were lucking that day in Norway. If the Norwegian kids camp that day still had a marksmanship program, the crazy may well have died at the hands of a 14 year old with a vintage6.5 Norwegian Krag. Its not about fire power, its about “bullet placement” in the “heat if battle”
As a firearms owner and persecuted minority even as a white Anglo Saxon now know what it is like to be black and living in the Southern United States 150 years ago. “You cannot legislate against insanity” and we are tired of being call “firearms porch monkeys”(a term which I find offensive); sitting on the porch, eating watermelon, waiting for darkness so that we can go out and find something to steal”. Sadly the backward view some against black people years ago and we cannot treat other minorities the same way in the 21 century
We are your brothers and sisters and the acts of the criminals and insane hurt us inside just as it hurts you. Why don’t you feel our pain also? Persecuting us to work off your frustrations will never be the answer as you pit citizen against citizen. It has little to do with the NRA, – its us!. Even in a civil society there will be wolves as Dave would say and we must have a good proportion of sheepdogs properly trained and armed to protect large “soft targets: That is what you, I and your families are to a wolf, so please for the love of your children and they people around you get used to the idea that there are actually genuinely evil and sick people in the world and its not “Gun Violence”. Its “people violence” by a very small few that “live on another waveband” . Tragically so, as Clint Eastwood said in “The Unforgiven” “ Some Folks Just need Killn’. I take no pleasure in saying that with some of these wolves we all have no choice but to concentrate and think sadly in accordance with our own training: “sight picture, trigger squeeze” If in happens around us, some of us feel no choice but to say out of love” “Send me”