Student response to school shootings: 'More guns are not the answer'

A health advocacy group released its own take on the "Demand A Plan" gun control campaign on Monday, in a video featuring a group of kids and teenagers asking for better access to counseling services instead of increasing the amount of armed personnel on school grounds.

"There's gonna be an ongoing discussion in our country about how we keep schools safe," a spokesperson for the California Endowment, Anne Stuhldreher, told The Raw Story on Monday. "A lot of times, young people have the answers, if you listen to them."

The video, which the group modeled after the one released by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign a week after the Dec. 14 mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary, shows 33 students from a community-based initiative.

"Don't lock down our schools," the students said in the video, originally posted last month. "More guns are not the answer."

Stuhldreher said that many of the students involved cited violence as the top concern in their communities.

"We wanted to create a space where young people could say what they wanted to see happen, post-Newtown, to keep their schools safe," she said.

And in the video, several of them specifically called for more counselors, mentors and health care.

"If I mess up or have problems, give me support, don't kick me out of school," the video said. "Give me support."

The video also cited a report by the Centers for Disease Control saying that an average of 14 youths between the ages of 10 and 24 is killed daily.

"We don't think that arming schools to the teeth is the answer here," Stuhldreher said. "Turning schools into police bunkers is not the answer."

Watch the video, originally posted on Dec. 21, 2012, below.

[h/t Colorlines]