Around 10 a.m. on April 20, a group of several dozen students gathered on the Madison Green and then marched downtown, protesting gun violence on the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

The students are members of Violence to Voices, a Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) organization for change. The group, along with students across the nation, walked April 20 in the third mass demonstration protesting gun violence over the past few months. DHHS students participated in the first school walkout and many DHHS students attended the March for Our Lives rally and March in Guilford last month.

Students have said they want to keep the gun violence conversation going so on the final day of their spring break from school, Kate Klein led a group of students and several adults from the Town Green down the Boston Post Road to Wall Street, across the Post Road, and back down toward the green.

Klein, a junior at DHHS, chanted “Protect kids, not guns,” and “This is what Democracy looks like,” and the group of students chanted back.

During a break, Joan Martin O’Neill, a Madison resident who happened to be downtown, approached the students and thanked them for taking action.

“I really appreciate what you are doing,” she said to Klein and some of the other students.

O’Neill said there had been a murder in her family, and that she was threatened with a shotgun when she was 12 years old. She told the students she hoped that they would be able to encourage some changes.

Using donated audio equipment and a podium on the green, students addressed the crowd of roughly 50 people of all ages. The students who spoke were not yet born when Columbine happened in 1999 and were five or six years old when 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings happened, so, as many pointed out, they have never lived in a world in which school shootings were not a reality.

Klein, who was one of the students with the original idea for the advocacy group, said the “nation cannot afford routine mass murders” and action needs to be taken now.

“We cannot let the 438 children who have died since Sandy Hook die in vain,” she said. “We cannot let the 187,000 students who have experienced school shootings since Columbine relive the trauma each and every time we have a massacre. We cannot have another massacre. We cannot continue to blame students for ostracizing the shooters, for letting them sit alone at lunch, for not being kind enough to someone who would eventually kill their friends. This is not a kindness issue. This is a gun issue.”

Students and other residents spoke and a booth was set up on the green to help students register to vote. Standing in the crowd was a familiar face—Republican former first selectman Fillmore McPherson. McPherson, who had a 30-plus year career with the U.S. Navy and earned the rank of captain, said he came to listen to the students.

“I support the Second Amendment,” McPherson said. “I think everyone should be allowed to have a single-shot muzzle loader,” he said, hinting at the type of weapon around when the Second Amendment was written. “I see no need to have assault rifles, bump stocks, lack of complete background checks, etc.”

Pem McNerney contributed to this story.