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After students walk out, Utah lawmakers say they’ve heard a message, propose meetings and study of ‘rampage violence’

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) West High School students listen to fellow students demand for gun reform and school safety after walking out of classes in Salt Lake, during a student walkout on Wed. March 14, 2018. Students in Utah and around the country planned the large-scale coordinated demonstration to protest gun violence and memorialize victims of last month's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Utah legislators say they heard the concerns raised by thousands of students who walked out of their classrooms to raise awareness of shooting victims, gun violence and school safety. The lawmakers want to hear more and plan to meet with students and also will launch a study on “rampage violence” and teen suicide in the coming months.

More than a dozen lawmakers have signed on to host meetings, which they say will be in high school auditoriums to encourage student participation. Dates and times aren’t yet known.

They said in a news release announcing the meetings they’d heard the message from students and wanted to address the concerns. Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, said in an interview that on Wednesday alone he’d received dozens of calls while flying on a business trip.

“I must have gotten 30-40 calls from students while I was in the air,” Bramble said. “Their concerns are real.”

A handful of high school students also had visited the Capitol to call for gun control after a man shot and killed 17 people in a high school in Florida. Rep. Lee Perry, R-Perry, who is part of the group that will host the town halls, met West High School students outside House chambers and said he was proud of their advocacy, but that they hadn’t offered specific concepts.

“If we want to empower the youth then we have to listen to them,” Perry, a Utah Highway Patrol lieutenant, said. “We’re going to them and we’re going to hear what they have to say.”

Lawmakers teetered on taking quick action on school and gun safety in the legislative session that ended last week, but opted to study those issues in the coming months. Rep. Susan Pulsipher, R-South Jordan, also said she’d sponsor a bill to fund a study on “rampage violence.”

“We’re studying suicide and we’re using the data to craft policies to respond to the crisis,” Pulsipher said. “We need to do the same thing with rampage violence. We need to know how to eradicate it. Step one is giving our best and brightest minds the resources they need to do the job.”