PARKLAND, Fla. (CN) - At the heart of a nationwide gun control rally, hundreds of students poured into the streets Wednesday outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of a Valentine's Day massacre that prompted swift, sweeping changes to gun laws in Florida, and a call for federal legislators to act.
Signs saying "No NRA in Our Schools" and "Never Again" protruded from finely manicured grass in Parkland, Florida as students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and neighboring Westglades Middle marched through the upscale community.
A block-long row of makeshift memorials, wreaths and red balloons covered the front gate of the high school.
The students in Parkland and across the country were participating in walkouts and protests to call on Congress for action on gun violence.
One Westglades Middle school student -- the first to reach a crowd of reporters -- proudly proclaimed that he and his schoolmates were defying teachers who had instructed them not to leave a school facility during the demonstration. A youth nearby said, "What are they going to do, write up 2,000 referrals?"
Another student, high school junior Zac Caton, said he was happy that Florida politicians had taken rapid action to enact gun control reform in Florida. A Republican-dominated state legislature and Gov. Rick Scott made SB 7026 into law last week, raising the legal age to purchase firearms in Florida from 18 to 21, banning bump stocks, and expanding waiting period regulations for gun purchases in the state, among other measures.
When asked for his reaction to the National Rifle Association's lawsuit that is attempting to strike down the new law in federal court, Caton appeared incensed.
"I supported the NRA for many years, but I think they're being arrogant," the student said.
He said the gun rights group's unwillingness to make concessions in the wake of the Parkland tragedy was unreasonable, given that part of the group's agenda -- a program to arm teachers who undergo firearms training -- made it into the bill.
"I'm not necessarily fine with teachers having guns in my school. But compromise needed to be made," Caton said.
He said he wasn't fazed when he returned to class, after the campus reverted from a crime scene to a school.
"I was glad to get back. It was an act of terrorism if you think about it. The only way terrorism works is if you give into it. As soon as we stepped back into the school, we were saying we are done with this shit. We are done being scared. We are going back in there and we are resuming," Caton said.
Similar student demonstrations were carried out across the country as part of a coordinated protest for gun law reform nationwide. The plan was to have students walk out of class for 17-minutes, one minute for each of the victims fatally injured in the Valentine's Day attack.
The Action Network, an online platform for organizing progressive political action, showed more than 3,000 self-listed protest sites, primarily schools and other facilities in the U.S., though people pledged participation from Israel to southeast Australia.
The "Youth Empower" group, through the Women's March organization, promoted the school walkouts while calling for the passage of federal legislation to ban assault weapons, and to expand background checks to all gun sales, instead of the current federal framework whereby licensed dealers, and not private sellers, are required to perform background checks.