South Carolina Governor Calls Student Walkouts 'Shameful,' Suggests Prayer Instead

Because those have worked so well in the past.

National School Walkout
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National School Walkout

Yesterday's nationwide student walkout to protest gun violence and honor the students killed in the South Florida school shooting last month was applauded by most, but not everyone was moved by its message. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster called it "shameful" and derided the act of solidarity as a left-wing agenda push, The Hill reports.

"It appears that these school children, innocent school children, are being used as a tool by [this] left-wing group to further their own agenda," he told local South Carolina network ETV. "It sounds like a protest to me. It’s not a memorial, it's certainly not a prayer service, it’s a political statement by a left-wing group and it’s shameful."

Apparently, school children too innocent to speak out about the danger their lives may potentially be in every time they go to class. High school students across the U.S. left their classrooms for 17 minutes to not only remember the 17 slain students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida but protest gun violence and demand gun law reform. It was initially organized by student survivors of the shooting advocating for stricter gun control and subsequently spread across social media.

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Instead of keeping continued national attention on the issue of gun control and pushing for change after decades of inaction, the Governor feels the teens should have used their energy for thoughts and prayers instead. "What we should all do and what these students should do—I imagine a lot of them intend to do—is to pray and to hope for the families of those who were slain," he said. 

One of the movement's most outspoken student survivors, 17-year-old David Hogg, responded to McMaster via Twitter. "Those future voters will not reelect you and outlive you too," he tweeted. "Can’t wait to see what the history textbooks our generation writes will have to say about people like you."

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