Greear Webb is tired of feeling unsafe at school.

On Tuesday evening, the Sanderson High School junior recounted the “intense fear” he felt during the school’s May 14 lockdown to a crowd of seven hundred gathered inside the Raleigh school’s auditorium for a town hall on school safety.

“As I was writing this speech,” Webb said, “I had to update and edit it numerous times just to stay current with the number of school shootings that [have] occurred since Parkland.”

Webb was the closing speaker at the NC Town Hall for School Safety, a student-organized event featuring panelists from the state Senate, the Wake County Board of Education, and Triangle law enforcement and mental health professionals. The event was moderated by student Madelyn Harkins and WRAL anchor Brad Johansen.

The ninety-minute panel, which addressed both pre-submitted and audience-submitted questions, dealt with mental health, school funding, and active shooter response efforts. An early question asked for thoughts regarding President Trump’s suggestion to arm teachers.

“There’s no way on earth that I would support something like that,” said Gerald Baker, a Democratic candidate for Wake County sheriff. His comment drew applause from the audience.

Inevitably, the discussion centered largely around access to guns. Senator John Alexander, a Republican from Wake County, said that there was “terrific unanimity” in the Senate about the need for stricter gun control laws. But his colleague, Democratic Senator Jay Chaudhuri, countered that there had been “lowest common denominator” agreement and that gains toward gun control legislation to this point have been “low-hanging fruit.”

Chapel Hill Police Department assistant chief Jabe Hunter agreed, citing a recommendation by the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division for an allocation of at least $45 million to fund school nurses, counselors, and nurses. The current Republican budget proposal allocates $10 million for this purpose.

“If you look at where our funding priorities are,” Hunter said, “I would argue that we are not doing enough.”

Both senators agreed that extreme-risk protection orders—court orders suspending access to firearms from those exhibiting “threatening, erratic, or dangerous behavior”—could be an important first step. Despite this apparent bipartisan support—and tepid backing from the NRA—a recent proposal from state Representative Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat, authorizing courts to take guns away from potentially violent people was quickly shuffled to the House Rules Committee, where legislation goes to die.

Alexander drew mild jeers during the panel, none louder than when he said that students needed to take a more active role in preventing school shootings by identifying and reporting potential perpetrators.

“You know what’s going on in your schools,” he said. “I’m telling you, students, you make sure you communicate this to the proper authorities so that perhaps that person can get some aid before they go off and do something horrible.”

There were much louder boos when a man in the audience loudly took issue with student representative Lauren Santana’s claim that the Second Amendment’s provision for a “well-regulated” militia meant that there was a constitutional obligation to pursue stricter gun control laws.

“’Well-regulated’ meant ‘well-trained,’” the man shouted, “not ‘government oversight’!”

Tuesday’s town hall was organized by a six-person student committee at Sanderson and sponsored by the school’s PTO. Webb and Santana first met with fellow organizers Maggie Duffy, Madelyn Harkins, Jessica Makler, and Woody Wisz to coordinate Sanderson’s involvement in the March 14 national student walkout protesting Congress’ failure to pass gun-control legislation following the Parkland shooting.

“We helped organize the walkouts,” says Wisz, a junior, “[and] we didn’t feel like we were done after that.”

“As long as students continue to die in schools needlessly, there will be a need for us,” adds Santana, a senior. “We’ll stay and keep doing what we’re doing.”