Some Schools Encourage Students to Join Gun Control ‘Walkout’

Schools around the country are formulating policy in anticipation of March 17 student walk-outs for gun control. And some are actively encouraging students to participate.

The walk-outs are being organized by the Women’s March — an anti-Trump, Louis Farrakhan-linked organization —  and are planned to occur on March 14. Student participates are being urged to walk out for 17 minutes, which is one minute for each victim killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack.

AP reports that some schools are promising to suspend students who walk out of class. This approach is exemplified by Needville, Texas, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes, who promises three days suspension for students who walk out, even if the students “get parental permission.”

Other schools are crafting policy to ensure the students can walk out without consequence. This includes “working with students to set up places on campus where they can remember the victims of the Florida shooting and express their views about school safety and gun control.”

California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, an avid advocate of gun control who is the Democratic frontrunner for governor in 2018, has urged schools not to punish students who walk out of class for the protest.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been talking to students about the planned walk-out, “advising [them] that because they are required to go to school by law, administrators can discipline them for unexcused absences.” However, the ACLU is also using an online video to tell students “that administrators can’t punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their demonstrations.”

UCLA, MIT, Harvard, Yale, the University of Connecticut, and many other colleges and universities have assured students that their admission chances will not be diminished by participating in one of the walk-outs for gun control.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.