March for Our Lives is a youth-led movement that aims to eliminate gun violence in our country in the wake of recent mass shootings including Uvalde.
Across America this organization held more than 500 rallies including one in Boise on the steps of the Idaho State Capitol.
"It’s so scary," said Simon Richardson of Boise High. "You can’t go a week without having a shooting, there have been over 200 shootings just this year and 40 since Uvalde in which 21 people were killed."
Simon Richardson helped organize this rally and he tells us what it is like to got to school in this day and age.
"You go to school each day wondering will our school be the next school that is on the news, will Boise High be the next school that gets attacked?" said Richardson. "Every time there is a lock down or a shelter in place our stomachs drop, it is hard living in a constant state of fear at school where we should be learning and having fun."
The rally had roughly two hundred people and across the street around 100 people gathered to counter-protest to protect the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms.
The counter protest was organized by the Liberty Dogs, we were there for about an hour and everything proceeded peacefully, we asked several people for interviews, but everyone we asked declined.
As for the March for Our Lives organizers they told us they don't want to ban firearms.
"We are not in support of taking away guns or anything like that, we are not anti-gun," said Richardson. "We believe in increased gun safety and gun awareness."
Opinions are strong on both sides of this issue, but the students tell us they just want to go to school without being afraid and they are tired of seeing children across the country lose their lives at school.
"We are just speaking up against the amount of gun violence in America and asking our legislators to act," said Richardson. "Do something and make changes to keep us all safe."
Richardson told us he supports the bill the House just passed that would change the minimum age of purchase for most semi-automatic rifles to 21, establish storage requirements and ban high-capacity ammunition magazines.
That bill is expected to die in the Senate and the high-capacity magazine debate creates an issue as a typical AR-15 magazines contain 30 rounds and hand gun magazines normally have 15 bullets, so this measure would basically ban both rifles and hand guns.
Republicans argue these measures infringe on law-abiding Americans calling them a direct attack on 2nd Amendment rights.
