Only 10% of March for Our Lives ‘student’ protesters were under 18: Study

It turns out the young people reportedly flocking to last weekend’s March for Our Lives were actually pretty old.

Only about 10 percent of those who attended the gun control rally in Washington, D.C., were under 18, and the average age of marchers was 49, according to research by a University of Maryland sociology professor Dana R. Fisher.

“Contrary to what’s been reported in many media accounts, the D.C. March for Our Lives crowd was not primarily made up of teenagers. Only about 10 percent of the participants were under 18,” said Ms. Fisher in a Wednesday op-ed in The Washington Post.

“The average age of the adults in the crowd was just under 49 years old, which is older than participants at the other marches I’ve surveyed but similar to the age of the average participant at the Million Moms March in 2000, which was also about gun control,” she said.

Her team randomly selected 256 participants at the Saturday protest at the National Mall area as part of her ongoing American Resistance project.

The march was widely billed as a student-driven push for gun control, spurred by the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead.

Media outlets referred to “students demonstrating for change,” “student marchers” and the “student movement” in reports on the Saturday rally, which drew large crowds in major cities nationwide.

While a number of Parkland students spoke at the event, the rally “had the allure of a free concert,” said Ms. Fisher, adding that the website included the names of performers like Ariana Grande but not the speakers.

About 27 percent of the protesters were participating in their first march, but only 12 percent said they were fueled by a desire to push for more firearms restrictions.

Instead, she found 56 percent were motivated by “issues of peace” and 42 percent by President Trump, “a galvanizing force for many protests.”

About 16 percent described themselves as moderate, while 79 percent said they were “left-leaning” and 89 percent voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Critics accused liberal advocacy groups that helped organize the event of using the teens as “pawns” and juicing crowd numbers.

The March for Our Lives initially reported that 850,000 people participated in the Washington, D.C., event, while two independent crowd-size estimates said the figure was closer to 200,000.