Colorado students walk out of vigil for school shooting victim after it turns political and shifts to gun control

Washington Post

Earlier today, there was a vigil held in Colorado to remember STEM School Highlands Ranch student Kendrick Castillo, who was murdered in a school shooting a few days ago. However, things went south when the guest speakers started moving the vigil towards gun control.

Angry students walked out of the vigil stating that they did not want their tragedy to be used as another statistic to push gun control and they wanted their voices to be heard. Video shows multiple students chanting the victim’s name and the words mental health.

Maybe they should have considered another setting to push for gun laws. Thoughts?

Don't blame them. Lots of kids got pretty pissed off with the whole "March for Our Lives" fiasco, where in D.C. the average protester was a 49 year old woman.

The only way to stop gun violence is with more guns. So simple! Maybe a nuclear missile for each citizen.

Understandable. A time and a place, in which honor of the dead is not it.

Another tacky move by Democrats to push their ridiculous ideology after a tragedy.

Good on the students who walked out.

Time and place.

Now you can't even vigil in peace. Is this a perfect representation of today's day and age divisions in American society or what?

The thing is that Republicans/conservatives/NRA have use the "time and place" mantra effectively since many people who aren't Republicans/conservatives/NRA also feel uncomfortable about politicizing the issue with the bodies not even 6 feet under yet.

Which is just a built in disadvantage for gun control activists. Team Enough, Senator Michael Bennet, Rep. Jason Crow, and Moms Demand Action volunteer Laura Reeves just took a PR hit.

And yet this means nothing anyway and will be a forgotten footnote in a few days...........

There's always that possibility that they just wanted to grieve their friend and not have their memorial get turned into another gun control rally...

@joebones5000: Are you always this stupid or is it just when politics are involved?

I live in Australia and have no idea what it is like for people to own guns.

@ad1x2: The future dead children of school shootings wanted to say "**** you" to everyone who looked at these tragedies and said we should be respectful of the dead by doing nothing.

@Sevenizz: it's not ridiculous to want mass shootings to stop or at least not happen so frequently. And lately they've been happening to often.

Take it up with the students that walked out, not me. I don’t know the victim so I don’t have a dog in the fight, but apparently those students didn’t want their dead friend used as a prop in another attempt to pass more gun control laws.

I’m pretty sure that if someone was murdered by an illegal alien and some pro-wall politicians tried to use the murder victim’s vigil as a rally to get more border wall funding many people here wouldn’t be upset if the audience walked out on them.

The manner or cause of the kid's death has nothing to do with the honoring of him. They are separate issues until connected by political ideology, and to do that is a belittlement of the respect to the fallen. People aren't doing nothing, they're just not doing anything in a particular circumstance that has a wholly different goal.

If it wasn't a personal ceremony focusing on the individual but used him as a nameless statistic amongst others, then there's really nothing to get in a tiff over, but to take a political stance in such a circumstance of individual mourning is tasteless at best, disrespectful at worst. Those kids were in the right.

I don’t know why people bother pushing for gun control anyway. If a bunch of elementary school kids getting shot up by an assault rifle didn’t do it at Sandyhook, I can safely say my fellow Americans care more about their toys than they do children’s lives.

Not a judgement, just a fact.

Hmm no. See, that's exactly the goal. It's the goal every time people say to shut up and respect the dead. I don't care if you consider it tasteless, it's absolutely a tactic used by gun advocates every time a mass shooting/tragedy like this happens. Thoughts and prayers are okay, talking about solutions regarding mental health (or chanting it in this case) is okay which is a political stance by the way, but talking about a gun issue is never okay.

I'm not sure why it has to be spoken about about at, say, someone's funeral or a venue of their remembrance. As if it isn't, it never will be. That's simply not true.

Sadly, we live in a time where any person will likely politicize an event, no matter how tragic. I remember when Obama politicized the funeral of the 5 Dallas police officers. Disgusting people exist in this world. Sad reality.

Not so much sad as expected. Over 60-70% of the country wants more strict gun control (90%+ for Universal Background Checks), so it's not exactly a mystery why/how this emotional event would become about a directly related political topic that hits at home. That's kind of how it works.

Irony. You're typically wrong here, and this is provable w/ citation.

So disrespectful to use a vigil for political advocacy.

Yeah it's never the time is it so the violence continues...……...

@LJS9502_basic: Why would it never be the time?

You can always hold a rally afterwards and reference the tragic event but during a vigil isn't right.

Even when the topic comes up after the events people whine it's not the time.

I have mixed feelings on gun control. Personally, I don't own a gun nor likely would ever. However, I do support the right of law abiding citizens to own firearms. Yet, we have an alarming number of preventable deaths each year from firearm violence. So what do you do?

@LJS9502_basic: It's a pretty well debated issue though, comes up pretty commonly. No conclusion seems completely satisfactory, which is to be expected from such a complicated issue.

I don't mind debating the ethics of gun control around the time of a tragedy like this, but to do it at the actual memorial service or any sort of service is pretty despicable.

I really hate the term "the new normal" because it's a terrible concept and a poor excuse, but this is more or less where we are arriving at. I am old enough to remember Columbine, it was shocking. People were sort of in this stupor of shock, disbelief, and sadness for weeks. Then more shootings happened and that feeling lasted a shorter amount of time. Then more shootings happened and it's "thoughts and prayers" and you move on. Then it became apathy. Now we are at the point where we forego any human sympathy and consideration and dive straight into our own self-interests.

70%, 80%, 90%, whatever percent that polls show that the public is in favor of more strict gun control but not with enough intensity. Topic of guns isn't a priority for the public while it is a generalized perception that 2A individuals will vote out politicians that vote in favor of gun restrictions.

It is known.

The sad truth of the US; Black and Brown kids have to dodge bullets in the streets while White kids have to dodge bullets in their schools.

All because these baby dick cuckservatives think their peashooters are gonna be able to fend off the might of the US Military with their tanks, drones and nukes in the event they go rogue. Unlike the Middle East, this is actually the US Government's turf. A couple of hicks drunk on moonshine aint gonna do anything but get absolutely wrecked. ?

You would be surprised how hard it is to overcome a well-led insurgency that would also include thousands of troops (some of whom would be senior officers and enlisted) that would desert rather than take orders to mass exterminate their fellow citizens, especially if they think the people in charge are intentionally ignoring their rights, as well as police departments across the country refusing to enforce what they felt were illegal instructions from the feds. This would go far beyond what happened in Kent State and would require far more complicit troops.

Look at Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and that was on the other side of the planet in places not under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution against people we didn’t know personally. We could have glassed them, but total destruction of their land would not have been in anyone’s best interests. I’m sure you don’t think Washington would be open to dropping nukes on red states and causing millions of deaths and trillions of dollars of damage in urban warfare in cities like NYC and Baltimore.

As for your first sentence, a lot of that gun violence takes place in areas that already have the strictest gun laws and many of those guns used in places like Chicago were illegally obtained.

@Celsius765: How would punishing legal and responsible gun owners stop such tragedies when most mass shootings are committed by individuals who obtain their guns illegally?

@zaryia: Again, using tragedy for political gain/talking points is disgusting.

Is it okay to talk about yet? How cold do the bodies have to be? Could we put them on ice and speed up the process of solutions being allowed to be discussed? Keep in mind that the kids were happy to chant one solution the day of the funeral.

@Sevenizz: legal and responsible gun owners are not consistent beings. People change mentally and physically with time. Mental health and safety checks would help with those changing people. And how do you know most mass shooters get their stuff illegaly. Some of these people stockpile this stuff before making a move it steal it from a parent. Some are likely gun enthusiasts. If supposed responsible gun owners snaps one day and goes on a killing spree it can be avoided early. If someone is slack with gun safety and little Billy decide to play with dad's gun someone may get shot. Or maybe some teen snatched their parents guns to kill bullies it can be avoided. I'd add an ammunition registry would help show who's stockpiling weapons for a shooting. I can understand collecting empty guns but if you are mass stocking bullets that's a red flag. And hey why not rent guns at firing ranges and hunting grounds. No one needs a gun meant to kill many people all at once or quickly.

One could do similar damage with a motor vehicle. Should we have mental health checks for vehicle owners?

@vl4d_l3nin: depends. I suppose if they're suicidal, prone to road rage, or heavy drinker. But then we already have cops and traffic laws on top this stuff. We are a lot looser with guns. Loose enough that civilians can buy assault rifles, stockpile guns and ammo, allow parents teach minors to shoot. It's a lucrative business that's the only reason measures haven't been put in place to stop or slow down the frequency of mass shooters.(of course it also would help if we diminished poverty and lowered the cost of mental healthcare).

Gun laws are still pretty strict even if certain people try to make it seem like it's easier to buy a gun than to buy a car (as long as your credit doesn't suck, you're licensed, and you have sufficient income you can get a car). In the case of the shooting this thread is about, the guns were legally purchased by the parents and the kids forced their way into the gun safe, meaning they were illegally obtained. If anything else, it may provide a case for laws determining how strong gun safes are, but not for more background checks or bans.

Also, this particular shooting pretty much disappeared from the news after only a few days because it was harder to use for the narrative people want to use, with the safe broken into, as well as one shooter being extremely anti-Trump and the other shooter being both transgendered and the child of someone in the country illegally with a criminal record not related to the illegal entry itself.

I completely disagree. They feel deeply about issue as they were personally effected and simply want more gun control.

@ad1x2: this is why I wish communication between family members was easier and that parents take mental illness seriously. Idk if mental illness is a thing in this case but if it is then it's the usual case of parents not knowing or logicing away their kid's mental health

Same here. People keep dying in these sorts of incidents and wanting them to stop or be lessened in the future is dismissed as "political". Meanwhile the parents are probably like "**** you, do something about this shit beyond "Thoughts and Fucking Prayers".

This is an interesting form of censorship that's been emerging on the last decade or so. The idea that you should leave politics out of basically everything, that protest is fine as long as it is not "out of place" like kneeling during the national anthem. It's interesting because while history teach us that both art as a vehicle for ideas and civic protest are important, and much more decisive for change than voting, the "elites" managed to spread this idea of civil obedience in a way that the populace are the ones doing most of the work.

@zaryia: Then we can agree to disagree.

Except the ones that walked out were the students directly affected by the shooting. The students were the one that knew the victim personally, not the politicians and activists that showed up a few days later and tried to make the memorial into a gun control rally.

Also, like I said earlier, I'm sure that it would not be taken very well if people tried to use a memorial for someone killed by an illegal alien as a rally for more border wall funding. Yes, I'm calling out the president for doing it with Mollie Tibbets even though it was a Twitter video and not her actual memorial/funeral.