Students at the STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado stormed out of a vigil honoring their slain classmate on Wednesday evening in anger over what they saw as a “political stunt” using their tragedy to push for gun control. “We are people, not a statement,” the students shouted as they marched out of the gymnasium at the nearby Highlands Ranch High School. Hundreds of students, teachers, and activists had attended the vigil, which was billed as honoring Kendrick Castillo, a teenager fatally shot when he tried to tackle one of the shooters in a spree on Tuesday that left eight others injured at a charter school in a Denver suburb. Two students, 18 and 16, have been arrested. Advertisement The event was organized by a gun control group called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. According to USA Today, many students appeared to have been unaware that the event was organized by an advocacy group. A half-hour in, after Sen. Michael F. Bennett and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado spoke about gun regulations, the students became furious at what they saw as the politicization of their trauma. Advertisement Advertisement “I thought this was about us, not about politics,” one student said, according to the Washington Post. Another student argued that they were “not a statistic” and shouldn’t be cited to justify gun control: “We are people, not a statement.” The students held their phones’ flashlights into the air and chanted, “mental health, mental health.” They also confronted journalists, whom the Brady Center had invited to cover the event, calling them derogatory names, according to the Denver Post, and asking to see what photos they had taken. The Brady Center apologized for the vigil later on Wednesday. “We are here to lift up the voices of victims and survivors,” the statement said. “We are deeply sorry any part of this vigil did not provide the support, caring and sense of community we sought to foster and facilitate.” According to the Washington Post, some students returned to the gymnasium later to finish the event. “We wanted Kendrick to be mourned,” one student who addressed the crowd said. “We wanted all of you to join us in that mourning. But that was not allowed here.”<doc-sep>Castillo was killed three days before graduation. A bullet hit the high school senior as he tried to tackle the shooter. Eight other students were injured when two people opened fire. Police have identified the alleged shooters as Devon Erickson and Alec McKinney. They were expected to appear in court Friday to formally face charges in connection with the shooting. McKinney, who is under 18, is also set to learn whether he will be charged as an adult.<doc-sep>A vigil held Wednesday evening to recognize the victims and heroes of the shooting earlier this week at a Colorado high school turned into a political protest after some students in attendance expressed frustration with the tone and focus of the speeches. According to local news reports, a group of students walked out of the event, organized by a local chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, after hearing speeches from members of the community, including activists and elected officials like Senator Michael Bennet, a Democratic presidential candidate, and Rep. Jason Crow, who represents the district where Tuesday's shooting took place. Both Bennet and Crow were invited by the Brady Campaign to speak at the event, which took place at a nearby high school, and also attended another vigil Wednesday night at a nearby church. Speakers at the event, which honored Kendrick Castillo, the 18-year-old who was killed protecting his fellow classmates at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, also talked about the need to take action in the wake of another tragic school shooting and reform the nation's gun laws. "I know our kids already have enough to do, they have a job to do when they come to school, you have a job to do when you come to school," Bennet, the former Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, said before praising Castillo's bravery. "Their job is not to fix America's broken gun laws. Their job is not, as Kendrick so selflessly did yesterday, to give up their own life to save their classmates lives. Or the teachers' lives. That's not their job." "You sent me to Washington to speak the truth. So here it is – we are failing. We are failing when this happens over and over and over and over again and nothing happens," Crow, a gun owner and former Army Ranger elected to Congress last year, said. "You already have my thoughts and prayers, but you deserve and should demand more. Because to only send thoughts and prayers when you're a member of Congress or when you're in a position to take action and to affect change, it is empty, it is hollow, and you and your children deserve more." On Thursday, Crow spoke with ABC News' Senior Washington Reporter Devin Dwyer about the protest, saying he supported the students' demand that they be given a chance to speak. "It was a very emotional night, which I completely understand, these are students that had just gone through a horrific tragedy...And it became apparent halfway through the event that they weren’t being given an opportunity to speak," Crow said. "So they stood up, as they should have, and demanded an opportunity to speak, and I supported that. I stayed late until every student was heard and had their opportunity to tell us how they felt about this issue and just express that emotion. So it was really important that we keep the focus on the students," he added. The tenor of the vigil seemed to shift after some in the audience began to express frustration that the event was not solely focused on remembering the heroes and victims of the shooting. "This can be an incredibly divisible or painful or awful time, or it can be a time when we come together," another speaker at the event told the packed gymnasium. After a number of speeches, one student in the audience shouted "Let STEM kids speak!" and video from the event from ABC News affiliate KMGH showed students chanting "Mental Health," as they left the event and gathered in the parking lot outside the gym. Students later re-entered the event and vented their frustration at the media and politicians. “What happened at STEM is awful, but it’s not a statistic. We can’t be used for a reason for gun control. We are people, not a statement,” one student said after the event. The Brady Campaign issued an apology Thursday afternoon, saying that all efforts should be focused on providing support to the students, faculty, and families affected by the tragic shooting. "We are here to lift up the voices of victims and survivors...We are deeply sorry any part of this vigil did not provide the support, caring and sense of community we sought to foster and facilitate and which we know is so crucial to communities who suffer the trauma of gun violence," the statement said. In the days after the shooting, Castillo, who was killed three days before graduation, has been remembered for his kindness and bravery. John Castillo, Kendrick Castillo's father, called his son's death "devastating, as you can imagine." "When I see the people that he saved, it made me happy," John Castillo said. "I knew my son wouldn’t have it any other way. But as any parent would tell you, 'It's a heck of a trade-off.'" ABC News' Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.<doc-sep>The very public scene of hundreds of Colorado students and their parents walking out of a vigil that was turned into political theater by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was so embarrassing that the gun control group actually issued an apology. Before leaving the Wednesday night event, students shouted, in front of journalists who the Brady Campaign invited: “this is not for us,” “political stunt” and “we are people, not a statement.” The Brady Campaign had portrayed the event as a vigil in memory of Kendrick Castillo, a student hero who died from gunshot wounds after he and two other students charged one of the attackers Tuesday at the Highlands Ranch STEM School in Colorado. COLORADO STUDENTS WALK OUT OF SCHOOL SHOOTING VIGIL AFTER POLITICIANS TAKE THE MIC Eight other students were injured in the shooting. Two students were arrested and accused of the attack. Instead of putting together an event to bring people together to mourn, the gun control group brought in activists and Colorado politicians – Democratic presidential contender U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jason Crow – to push a one-sided political agenda. The speakers said they weren’t there to just offer thoughts and prayers, but that they instead were there to push for more restrictions on the right to bear arms. We saw this with events after the shooting at Parkland High School in Florida. T events, including a CNN town hall, weren’t open forums or vigils. They were orchestrated propaganda designed to push a political cause. Law-abiding gun owners enjoy shooting competitions, hunting or simply want to defend themselves and their loved ones. They should not be blamed for the evil actions of criminals and those with serious mental health problems. The CNN event even featured then-Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. He vociferously stuck to the gun control narrative. He should have known – and we would all soon find out – that a school resource officer stayed outside during the attack. President Trump later called the officer a “coward.” Turning grieving students into props for an agenda has become what these gun control groups and the mainstream media do after shootings. This has become so choreographed that the Brady Campaign was caught flat-footed when hundreds of students and their parents wouldn’t be extras in the production. This is an important moment because it signals that a less ideological time is coming. Groups like the Brady Campaign and the politicians who agree with them have been treating legal gun ownership as a problem that needs to be solved. They are blaming law-abiding gun owners for the actions of criminals as a way to impose more controls on the citizenry. This political treatment of an important issue has made it difficult to even have an intelligent discussion about the problem. How can an open and honest dialogue be possible when the mainstream media and so many Democrats prefer to blame America’s 100-million-plus gun owners? Law-abiding gun owners enjoy shooting competitions, hunting or simply want to defend themselves and their loved ones. They should not be blamed for the evil actions of criminals and those with serious mental health problems. Guns have been commonly owned by Americans since before the beginning of our republic, but school shootings are a modern trend. Yet they are not new. The most deadly attack on a school actually occurred in 1927 in Bath, Mich., when a trustee from a local school board detonated 600 pounds of dynamite he placed inside the Bath Consolidated School. Andrew Kehoe killed 44 people, including 38 elementary school children and his wife. He then committed suicide by detonating a final explosion in his truck that also killed another three adults and a child. There is a lot of evidence, however, that some things have changed. There is certainly a mental health crisis growing in our youth in America. Suicide rates among the young, especially those between 15 and 24, have climbed rapidly in recent years. Levels of anxiety and depression among young people are also up. The reasons for this growing epidemic are numerous and many researchers are studying the problem. But it is clear that if we honestly target the actual problem things can be done. Often, after a murderer strikes a school or another so-called “gun-free zone,” we find that the person responsible was calling out for help. Parents try, but they too often can’t find enough resources. The bureaucracy has also failed us again and again. Too often the killers weren’t stopped before they acted, even though many people reported them to the proper authorities. Various federal, state and local agencies have also too often failed to give the names of people prohibited from owning firearms to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), so these people can at least be stopped from legally buying a gun. Political differences aside, imagine if the media actually treated gun rights groups honestly. The National Rifle Association (full disclosure, I write a weekly gun rights column for the NRA) has the School Shield program that sends teams of experts to schools to help them create safer environments. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, has lobbied for FixNICS and many other initiatives to keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited from owning them. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Instead of demonizing these groups, imagine if the mainstream media were willing to be more factual and nuanced in their reporting. Solutions would become much clearer in such a climate. The students who boldly walked out en masse as they chanted “mental health, mental health” from what shouldn’t have been a political event did shock the mainstream media into actually reporting on the story. That’s a big step toward finding honest solutions to a horrifying problem. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY FRANK MINITER<doc-sep>
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. – Gun rights advocates posted support on social media Thursday for students who walked out of a gun-control rally in anger and tears over concerns the event inappropriately politicized their grief. The event Wednesday was primarily billed as a vigil to honor Kendrick Castillo, who was fatally shot in a rampage by two students at the STEM school here. Speakers at the school's packed gymnasium, however, were mostly politicians and advocates pressing Congress for more restrictive gun laws. After about 30 minutes, hundreds of students from the STEM School stormed out yelling "this is not for us," "political stunt" and "we are people, not a statement." Candace Craig, who has three kids attending STEM, said it was just too early for to push for action. She said the trauma is still fresh for the thousands of parents and their kids who suffered through the shooting and the anxious hours that followed. "We need quiet. We need familiar faces. We need to hold our babies. We will heal and we will rise stronger and ready to say 'enough,'" she said Thursday. "But right now, we are shaken. We are broken. We hurt for the families whose worlds were turned upside down with grief and loss. That’s what we want the world to hear from us." Wednesday night, the traumatized shooting survivors who exited the rally thrust lighted cellphones into the air and chanted "mental health, mental health," as their hands and voices shook in the cold rain. Angry students pushed and screamed at journalists, demanding to see photos they had taken. Interview requests made by a USA TODAY reporter were rebuffed; multiple students said they had agreed not to talk to journalists. Many students appeared unaware the event was organized by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Jason Crow, both Democrats, both spoke at length about the need for federal action. The Brady Campaign invited reporters to cover the event. Colorado school shooting:Students and guard lauded for heroism Heroes:11 days. 3 mass shootings. 3 heroes. Risking lives for others The students drew plenty of support on social media. "These politicians remind me of ambulance chasers," posted a Utah woman. "Ready to pounce on the next big shooting with their gun control agenda." A Colorado woman posted: "Love this so much! I’m so proud of these students! After some rough political months here in Colorado this was a welcomed sight & hope for our future!" In an apology issued afterward, the Brady Campaign said all efforts should be focused on supporting the STEM students, families and faculty members. "We are deeply sorry any part of this vigil did not provide the support, caring and sense of community we sought to foster and facilitate and which we know is so crucial to communities who suffer the trauma of gun violence," the statement said. Some STEM students and family members held a private vigil earlier in the day. They said the public and journalists were kept out to permit anguished students and their parents a chance to grieve together away from the media spotlight into which they have unwillingly been thrust. Castillo, 18, was killed and eight students were wounded Tuesday when two teens opened fire in classrooms at the K-12 school specializing in science and math. Castillo, three days away from completing high school, and two classmates charged one of the shooters at his school. The avid hunter and fisherman was killed. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed "red flag" legislation last month providing judges with the power to temporarily remove firearms from people believed to be at high risk of harming themselves or others.