Pro-Second Amendment student walkout takes place across the country
Students from nearly 300 schools across the country were expected to walk out in a different kind of protest Wednesday.
Rather than calling for gun control reforms, Wednesday's efforts were meant to show support for the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.
The planned "Stand For the Second" walkouts fell on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the March for Our Lives, the national walkouts that were held on March 14 in response to the deadly Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting a month prior.
According to a map of participating schools on the Tea Party Patriots website, schools in 43 states were slated to participate, with timing varying per school with many listing their walkouts at either 10:00 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. local.
The Second Amendment walkouts were slated to last 16 minutes, one minute shy of the 17-minute walkouts that many schools observed for the March for Our Lives.
Lance Cooper, an 11th-grader in the Schoharie (N.Y.) Central School District, told was among 22 students who walked out of his school Wednesday, CNN reported.
He told the network: "I do think there are way too many gun control laws, especially in New York where I am."
The idea for the walkout reportedly stemmed from the idea of a senior in New Mexico who felt he and others with similar views were not being represented by the March for Our Lives.
"I'm watching the news and I see they're saying 'Well we have to do something about this. We have to enact some sort of gun control legislation because this is what the kids are asking for.' And I'm thinking, 'I'm not asking for that.' I look at my friends and I think 'They're not asking for that,'" student Will Riley told local paper The Carlsbad Current Argus.
"I wanted to give a voice to all of the people who feel that they're being misrepresented by the media," he told the paper.
