LA County students demand safer campuses, tougher gun laws

Dozens of students walked out of class Thursday at Saugus High School — site of a fatal campus shooting in 2019 — to demand safer campuses and changes in gun laws in the wake of this week’s shooting rampage at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers.

“Twenty-one people are now dead, and this is not our generation’s fault,” student Mia Tretta, a junior who was wounded in the 2019 shooting at Saugus High School, told reporters at the morning walkout. “This is the people who are making the laws and they are not listening to the fact that we are dying at our schools.”

Five people were shot in the Saugus shooting on Nov. 14, 2019, with two of them dying. The 16-year-old gunman killed himself.

The Saugus students stood outside the campus Thursday morning, waving signs and chanting, calling for tougher gun laws and demanding safety on campus.

Walkouts were also held at other schools, including Locke High School in South Los Angeles and El Camino Real in Woodland Hills. Similar actions were held at other schools across the country in the aftermath of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Students at the various protests waved signs with slogans such as “Enough is enough,” “It happened to me, it could happen to you” and “Education>guns.”

“It brings everything back every time another (shooting) happens and no change has been made,” Tretta told ABC7. “I’m disappointed in the people who are higher-ups who say we need more guns, we need armed teachers. That’s not how it is. We need less guns over here. We need a safe place. …

“Schools should be a sanctuary of learning, not of death. And I shouldn’t have to be scared every time I walk onto that campus that I might get shot and killed. And it’s not fair that it keeps happening across our country, and it doesn’t happen in any other countries, and we’re supposed to be one of the leaders.”