After spate of shootings, students and teachers call for policy changes at Boise rally
When the fire alarm goes off at Jefferson Middle School in Caldwell, Katelyn Benavidez said rather than asking if there’s a fire, students ask if there’s a shooter.
Benavidez, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher, said pulling the fire alarm can be a strategy shooters use to kill more people as they evacuate. The prevalence of school shootings around the country has heightened the concern.
“A lot of kids deal with this reality every day,” Benavidez told the Idaho Statesman.
Benavidez was one of the several hundred people Saturday afternoon at the Idaho Capitol taking part in the March For Our Lives rally in response to recent shootings, including the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers. Speakers called for policy changes in hopes of less violence.
Across the street, on the south side of West Jefferson Street, demonstrators held guns, wore Second Amendment-themed clothing and shouted back during the rally.
Benavidez said her classroom’s door swings out rather than in, so she couldn’t barricade it in an emergency. It also doesn’t have windows, making a potential escape more challenging. Lockdown drills, she said, are filled with fear, anxiety and doubt.
“Can I save a student if I had to? Would I be able to protect myself? Would I be able to return to my place of work if something were to happen?” Benavidez said. “It’s a lot of confusion about what would happen, why it would happen, where it would be. All of those things — it’s really hard to describe.”
Benavidez held a sign that said “I am a teacher, not a human shield.” Around the perimeter, it listed places where school shootings happened. Along the top was Saugus High School in California, where Benavidez graduated from and where a shooter killed two others and himself in 2019. She remembers the feeling of watching friends and teachers she knew on television being escorted out of the school. Her preferred legislation is raising the age minimum on assault weapons, universal background checks, red flag laws and licensing.
“I’ve grown up with lockdown drills,” Benavidez said, “and now I’m a teacher and I want to see them go away in my teaching career.”
Tara Marie, one of the speakers at the rally, said she survived the Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 that killed 58 people.
Ten days before the Uvalde shooting, 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
“I’m not getting enough time in between the shootings to heal,” Marie said to the crowd.
“All of us need to listen to one another and talk,” Marie said. “Let’s leave politics and agendas at the door.”
Throughout the rally, chants broke out: “Save our kids.” And later, “Enough is enough.”
From across West Jefferson Street, demonstrators yelled, “Arm our teachers.”
Deborah Chalmers was part of the crowd holding guns. She had a handgun in a holster on her hip. She wore a sign around her neck that said “Moms for guns.”
She said she attended to “protect my Second Amendment rights.”
“All of our freedoms afforded to us by the Constitution of America are being eroded, I believe,” Chalmers told the Statesman. “I think that we got to take a stand.”
Chalmers said she views guns as something to provide protection rather than inflict violence.
“My big concern is if you start taking one thing, they’ll start taking the other things,” Chalmers said.
Amaia Clayton, one of the March For Our Lives organizers, told the crowd “it’s flat out not true” that people advocating for less gun violence want to take away guns. Clayton said she’s taken hunter safety training and supports responsible gun ownership. She said high schoolers and some teenagers like her aren’t allowed to vote, but would be the ones affected by a school shooting.
Another organizer, Simon Richardson, said he’s tired of being scared to go to school and living in fear.
Clayton encouraged people to contact elected officials and request change. There was a poster in front of the podium that said “Find your legislator,” with a QR code. People held signs and marched around the Capitol before using chalk to write messages on the sidewalk.
Ayla Birch, another attendee, grew up hunting with her father while living in Gooding, north of Twin Falls. She also used to be a middle school teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, and during lockdown drills, she remembers her students’ terror.
Students would ask her, “Are you sure it’s not real?”
This past week, Birch was inspired to assist with Moms Demand Action, a group that aims to end gun violence. She handed out stickers Saturday. She held a sign advocating for mandatory background checks, raising the age limit to buy guns to 21, enacting red flag laws and banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
“My two daughters shouldn’t be worried about going to school,” Birch said.
This story was originally published June 11, 2022 at 5:26 PM.
