Pete Fulweiler, 17, held up a sign honoring Alyssa Alhadeff, a victim of the Parkland school shooting. ~Photos by Emily Blackwood

By Emily Blackwood

As the snow began to fall and the winds of Winter Storm Quinn started to pick up, a seed of doubt was planted by a random passerby.

“Think they’ll still come?” he asked volunteers as they were continuing to set up tents and tables.

And suddenly — almost as if they had heard the exchange — the sound of chanting started in the distance. It was the students of Somerville High School, and they were coming to be heard.

“What do we want?”

“Gun reform!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

Shouting the chant in the unison and holding up signs of protest, hundreds of students walked from the school to Union Square March 7 to protest the “lack of competent gun laws.” Underneath those tents were the names, phone numbers and email addresses of different members of the Massachusetts Legislature. Students urged each other to reach out and lobby to pass the Extreme Risk Protective Orders.

Hundreds of students gathered in Union Square Wednesday to protest gun violence.

ERPOs would allow people to report persons in possession of firearms of being an imminent danger to themselves or others. Then, police can place a temporary weapons ban on the person in question awaiting a trial within 14 days. The trial determines if the person will have a year-long weapons ban placed on them.

“We’ll all be voting soon,” said 15-year-old Somerville High student Jack Torres. “And we want our congressmen to know that we’ll remember what was done during this time.”

This is the second walkout hosted by the student group who is calling themselves Students Against Gun Violence. They chose to protest and sit in silence for 17 minutes to honor the 17 people who were killed in a mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The organization plans to hold these walkouts weekly, a movement that is being called #walkoutwednesday. In addition to the massive group that came out to Union Square, over 400 students gathered outside of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School that same day.

Arlington High School and Granite State Arts Academy in Salem, N.H., are also joining in on the movement.

“By joining together, we’re showing that all of Massachusetts cares,” Torres said. “This isn’t just a Somerville issue. It’s an everyone issue.”

For more information on the movement, follow Students Against Gun Violence on Twitter at @StudentsAGVUSA.