Utah students plan march to support Florida school shooting victims

SALT LAKE CITY – Students in Utah plan to march to the State Capitol on March 24, to demand action after the school shooting in Florida.

On a Facebook event page for “March for our Lives – Salt Lake City,” organizers said lawmakers have not done enough to make citizens safe.

“We march to demand they end this bloodshed, and allow our brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, to again feel safe in the places where we build the next great generation of Americans,” according to the event page.

West High School senior Elizabeth Love is one of the organizers. She has been passionate about finding solutions to mass shootings since she was in middle school.

“Sandy Hook happened on a Friday and I know that because for Saturday and Sunday, I was so scared to go back to school,” Love said.

When Love saw students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida take a stand at rallies and on social media, she wanted to support them here in Utah. She believes the aftermath of this shooting could be a turning point.

“This is something that’s been building in kids our age for a really long time. This is something that we have lived with all the way through school and we’ve been upset about it all the way through school,” she said.

Love and fellow students plan to march from the downtown area to the State Capitol, where they will hold a rally supporting the “March for our Lives” initiative. They are still forming their message, but Love said they were not calling for a complete ban on guns.

“Nobody wants to get rid of the Second Amendment. Nobody wants to get rid of anybody’s guns. We just want guns to be treated like anything else,” she said. “There should be as many regulations on guns as there are on cars.”

What students want most, Love said, is to see lawmakers look for solutions.

“We don’t have all the answers, but we want people to start looking for them,” she said.