Some parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, are likely to hear an interesting response Friday night when they ask their teenagers how the day at school went.
Eight members of Montgomery County Students for Gun Control made their way to the U.S. Capitol on Friday afternoon, where they staged a sit-in outside the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). They were calling on him to pass common-sense gun control legislation.
The U.S. Capitol Police ended up arresting four of them, according to Daniel Gelillo, a member of the student group who didn’t attend the sit-in.
Gelillo, 17, told HuffPost that the teens organized Friday’s action as a rapid response to that morning’s Texas high school shooting, which left 10 dead and another 10 wounded.
The protest caught the attention of David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, who tweeted his support:
“This is an issue we all care about deeply, and we’re all incredibly frustrated and saddened by the losses suffered in Texas today,” Gelillo told HuffPost. “We want to see change, and we want to see it sooner rather than later.”
He added, “We should not live in a country where we have to go to school in fear of the possibility of looking down the barrel of a rifle.”
Eva Malecki, communications director for the U.S. Capitol Police, confirmed that four juveniles were arrested Friday outside the office building where Ryan works. The four face charges of “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.”
Watch a full video of the protest and the arrests below: