Competing marches for school safety planned for Saturday in Utah
Mar 23, 2018, 9:20 PM | Updated: Mar 24, 2018, 1:17 am
SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City is playing host to two different marches on Saturday with differing views on gun control and how best to keep schools safe.
Brighton High School senior Meg Flynn says the “March for Our Lives” event is not anti-gun. “We’re trying to be able regulate guns so that it’s safer for students,” she said.
“There’s going to be a lot of heightened tensions,” said Meg Flynn, a senior at Brighton High School. “Our hope is that we can each have our own separate marches.”
Flynn is part of the nationwide “March for Our Lives” movement that has hundreds of marches planned around the country. She and other Utah high school students plan to gather at West High School at 11:00 a.m. Saturday and then walk to the nearby Utah Capitol building.
“We’re thinking it’s going to be pretty big,” Flynn said of the expected crowd, noting that students from Utah County are carpooling to Salt Lake City to join them.
“The older generations haven’t done anything, so now we have to do something,” said Ben Lomond High School senior Han Johnson about current students demanding that lawmakers create tighter gun control regulations.
Johnson said “March for Our Lives” is not anti-gun, but that they are calling for changes to regulations.
“We don’t want to take everyone’s guns away,” she said. “The Second Amendment exists for a reason but we need to have certain safety precautions around who can have a gun and how guns are made.”
That stance on gun control spawned a counter-protest march by the Utah Gun Exchange that will take place earlier Saturday, at 9:30 a.m., on the very same route.
“Our message is the same, we want to secure our children,” said Bryan Melchior, with the Utah Gun Exchange. “If we had it our way, we would be a part of the original march.”
Utah Gun Exchange co-owner Bryan Melchior holds up a sign that will be used in Saturday’s pro-gun march to the Capitol building.
Melchior said his pro-gun march will also start at West High School and then move to Utah’s Capitol Hill. He anticipates students will also join their earlier march, saying he’s been contacted by many young people who are not comfortable with the messaging “March for Our Lives.”
“’March for Our Lives’ has been hijacked by Washington leftists,” Melchior said. “And the children are no longer in charge—they were never in charge.”
While advocating for more gun education, Melchior hopes the march draws attention to free classes offered by Utah Gun Exchange to get more teachers to carry guns.
Salt Lake City’s police department says it’s not worried about the competing marches, especially since there’s now a time buffer between the events.
Two separate school safety marches are planned to start on Saturday at Salt Lake City’s West High School.
“Nobody wants an incident to occur,” said Detective Matt Roper with Salt Lake City police. “We’re really happy with the way that this has been turning out so far, as far as cooperation from the event coordinators and really working to accommodate both groups.”
RELATED: Hundreds of Utahns plan to join ‘March for our Lives’ and pro-gun march
