NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Three weeks after the deadly Covenant School shooting, students, parents, and faith leaders are planning a “Moral Monday” march, in hopes of preventing more gun violence. 

A Vanderbilt University student majoring in elementary education, Helena Spigner, plans to walk alongside Students Demand Action.  

“After Covenant, hitting so close to home, only 20 minutes, not even, away from Vanderbilt and in our own community, in a place that we thought was safe, it just really made all of us want to get up, take action, and we wanted to say that this was going to be the last one,” Spigner said.  

In addition to Students Demand Action, members of Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, as well as faith leaders from Middle Tennessee and across the country, will march from McKendree United Methodist Church to the Tennessee State Capitol at 2 p.m. on Monday, April 17.

The groups hope to speak out against legislation that would lower the permitless carry age to 18, along with another bill that would allow teachers to carry concealed weapons on school grounds. 

“We’re not going to get the training to be armed because, realistically speaking, we’re not getting paid enough and people aren’t already putting in the training for us, so I don’t see why it would be a good idea to arm our teachers,” Spigner said. “We don’t have the money for these weapons and we aren’t going to get paid for them because we already have to pay for our own materials in our classrooms. We decorate our classrooms from our own pockets.” 

Spigner predicted as many of thousands of people could show up for the march, and invited anyone interested to join them.  

Above all else, she hopes Monday’s march will help shed a light on the gun violence that children are dealing with across the country.  

“This is something that is impacting every single one of us, and it’s beyond the schools. It’s really just, this is becoming a health pandemic,” Spigner said. “This is a problem that we need to be addressing immediately because it shouldn’t take another life.”

To prove their point, the organizations participating in the rally plan to march with child-sized caskets.