A Ridgefield teenager is the driving force behind a proposed nationwide walkout of high school students planned for April of this year.
Lane Murdock started organizing the event in the days following the shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Murdock said the first 48 hours were some of the busiest of her young life.
"I was hearing from people all over the country that they wanted to participate," Murdock said.
The 15-year-old's response to the most recent mass shooting could be the start of a new activism among teenagers, as witnessed by students from Florida speaking out for stricter gun laws.
She said her generation has lived with gun violence and mass shootings in ways that no other has in history.
"In the short time I've been in high school, we've had The Pulse [Orlando], Las Vegas, and Florida shooting so of course kids are getting into action," Murdock told reporters and gun rights supporters during a press conference on Friday. "This surrounds us every day."
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Joining Murdock and her peers are nearly all of Connecticut’s members of Congress and families affected by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Mark Barden, the father of Daniel Barden who was killed by a lone gunman in Newtown more than five years ago, spoke up in support of the movement aimed at reducing gun violence not just in schools but in all public places where shootings have occurred.
Barden recently returned from a visit to the White House where he was invited, along with fellow Sandy Hook parent Nicole Hockley, to meet with President Donald Trump, for a listening session on gun violence.
"Let's give him credit because he asked for advice on what to do about this," Barden said of the president.
Barden said he advised, "I've been working this and I've come up with a really good model that works. Where arming teachers and students with the tools on how to recognize people and to spot them and to get them help before they pick up an AR-15 and wreak havoc at a school or at a concert or at a movie theater or at a shopping mall."
Trump told the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting that he is a still a staunch supporter of the NRA but said he wanted to strengthen the background check system. For the second time this week, he also proposed arming teachers, saying the shooting in Florida could have been stopped by a teacher.
"A teacher would've shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened," Trump said.
On background checks, the president would find common ground with about 97 percent of Americans, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Sen. Chris Murphy told the group in Hartford on Friday,
"Apple pie doesn’t poll that well," Sen. Chris Murphy quipped in Hartford on Friday.
Murdock said she only expects the walkout movement to grow over the next two months and said she also expects her generation to take the lead when it comes to guns and other issues.
"Most of us can’t vote yet," she said.
