Indiana Students, Teachers Demand Gun-Safety Steps

Academics and college students from throughout Indiana will march in Indianapolis on Saturday to demand motion on stopping gun violence. The occasion is a part of the nationwide March for Our Lives protest, with comparable actions in cities throughout the state and nation this weekend.

Randy Harrison, vp of the Indiana chapter of the American Federation of Academics, mentioned the aim is to push lawmakers to take up new gun-safety measures.

“For much too lengthy,” he mentioned, “kids and educators – and the households of these kids and educators – have been on the receiving finish of the gun violence.”

In July, Indiana will enact a controversial legislation permitting individuals to hold handguns with out a allow. It’ll nonetheless be unlawful for folk who beforehand have been barred from carrying a handgun to take action come July 1 – though gun-safety advocates have contended the allowing course of is important to catching these individuals early. Not less than 24 different states have adopted comparable insurance policies.

In keeping with the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Security, Indiana’s gun dying price elevated by 78% from 2011 to 2020, greater than double the tempo of the nationwide common in the identical time interval. Harrison, a high-school authorities trainer from Anderson, mentioned the protests aren’t anti-Second Modification.

“It’s selling methods to maintain all of us secure,” he mentioned, “and sure, it might embody mental-health insurance policies and issues like that, however I believe it’s acquired to be a conglomerate of insurance policies that concentrate on this challenge.”

The final nationwide March for Our Lives occasion was held in 2018, and this 12 months’s motion comes simply weeks after a capturing in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 college students and two lecturers lifeless. The Everytown report mentioned weapons are the main reason for dying amongst Hoosier kids and teenagers, ending a median of 110 lives annually.