In the wake of Apalachee shooting, hundreds of students walk out of Herschel V. Jenkins High School

Cecilia Adams, an 18-year-old student at Savannah’s Herschel V. Jenkins High School, vividly remembers her first school shooting drill. She was in kindergarten at Marshpoint Elementary on Whitemarsh Island.

Adams recalled watching a teacher hugging one of her classmates to calm them and to stop them from crying. 

“Man,” said Adams, pausing. “That thing was crazy.” 

Spurred by the Apalachee High School shooting on Sept. 4, which claimed four lives and left nine others injured, Adams helped organize a demonstration for gun law reform on Friday. 

The Jenkins students observed four minutes of silence, one for each life lost. Organizers then spoke, with somber speeches punctuated by chanting by hundreds of protesters gathered on the football field in support of gun reform. 

The Jenkins event was part of a statewide call to action from the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, where highschoolers across Georgia united by a social media movement demonstration in support of the Pediatric Safe Storage Act. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Michelle Au, a Democrat from John’s Creek, calls for creating standardized storage practices and would require parents to lock up their firearms. 

Students have watched multiple unsuccessful attempts to pass the legislation, which calls for parents to “take steps that a reasonable person would believe sufficient to prevent the access to a readily dischargeable firearm by a child.”

In Georgia, attempts to pass similar bills in the Republican-led statehouse also have failed.

Students at Jenkins expressed their anger and sadness about lawmakers’ failure to keep them safe.

In 2024 alone there have been 139 incidents of gunfire at schools across the nation, resulting in 42 deaths and 91 injuries, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. That includes the Apalachee shooting.

“There’s constantly people talking, but every time it gets there, it is shut down almost immediately,” said student organizer Ablew Vickery, 16. “And that is just very frustrating to see over and over and be given that false hope.” 

Justin Durham, the principal of Jenkins, enthusiastically approved Friday’s student-led movement. The school district allowed the demonstration, but did not organize it.

Durham said understood the feeling of sadness and numbness that his students experienced after learning of the Apalchee shooting, because he felt them too. Converting those emotions into action is cathartic, he said.

“I don’t have body armor or I don’t carry a pistol. But you know what? What I do carry is the ability to create relationships,” said Jenkins, emphasizing the school’s attempt to have a “safe person” for every student to turn to. 

Harrison Tran, 17, agreed that action was necessary. 

“Just being here today and having this walk out really just means a lot and to just share that this affects everyone,” Tran said. 

Threaded through the roughly 800 protesting students were a few parents observing from the school’s perimeter.  

Lynn Adams, mother of Cecilia, says she has seen firsthand the effects of a childhood filled with the news of school shootings. 

“It does affect them,” said Lynn Adams. “They try to say it doesn’t. They try to say, ‘Oh, I’m so over it.’ But you know, you can tell.” 

“Her generation is also the same age as the Sandy Hook children” said Adams. “So that’s something that kind of resonates with me as a mother. On her birthday, that’s kind of in the back of my mind, that she’s the same age as all those children.”

Cecilia Adams turned 18 earlier this month, which her mother says Adams celebrated by registering to vote.