Columbine students hold voter registration rally ahead of shooting anniversary

Students at Columbine High School participated in a voter registration rally Thursday ahead of the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at the school.

The Vote for Our Lives event in Littleton, Colo., featured speakers who survived the mass shooting at Columbine, as well as survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school mass shooting, Reuters reported.

{mosads}The event was held the night before students across the country prepare to walk out of schools Friday to protest gun violence.

Students from more than 2,600 institutions plan to walk out of classes at 10 a.m. Friday as part of a call to action by Parkland survivors.

Many Parkland students have become key figures in the anti-gun violence movement since the mass shooting at their school earlier this year that left 17 people dead.

The students organized the March for Our Lives in D.C. last month, drawing in hundreds of thousands of attendees and sparking sister events at cities across the world.

Now the students are focusing on ways to address gun violence and pass restrictions on guns, including registering teenagers and others to vote.

“This movement is the next step in the series of pressure points placed on politicians to take action,” Vote for Our Lives said in a statement to Reuters. “We walked out, then we marched, and now we vote.”

Organizers behind Friday’s walkout say their goal is to hold officials accountable, promote possible fixes to gun violence and get more students to participate in politics.

Protesting students are asked to wear orange and hold a 13-second moment of silence to honor the Columbine victims.

Columbine students will not be walking out because the school will be closed as part of a longstanding tradition. Students are asked to participate in community service instead.

Students across the country participated in a similar walkout last month.