Another day, another school walkout. That’s because freedom is disruptive, controversial, and messy.

School administrators enthusiastically embraced and facilitated the political, adult-organized student walkouts of March 14. Students and teachers rallied for more gun control, at the behest of Women’s March Youth EMPOWER and other organizations funded by left-leaning billionaire George Soros.

In facilitating the walkouts, educators set a precedent. They inadvertently invited all variety of walkouts for nearly any causes imaginable. Public administrators cannot support one political agenda, then restrain or punish students who advance another. In doing so, they would impugn the First Amendment.

Students at Colorado Springs Discovery Canyon High School proved this point Wednesday. They walked out to support gun rights protected by the Second Amendment.

“Both sides of the argument need to be shown,” said sophomore Gabriel Paz Soldan, as quoted in a Gazette news story.

“We’re standing for the right to be able to have weapons for defense purposes and hunting.”

Expressing similar sentiments, more than 100 students marched out of Woodland Park High School April 4 to rally for gun rights.

Protesters at the gun-rights protests held moments of silence for students killed in the Feb. 14 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Administrators at both local schools accommodated the walkouts by declining to punish students. More Second Amendment rallies will likely ensue.

“They said they will not condemn or support this, but they do support our First Amendment rights and our freedom to protest,” Soldan told Gazette education reporter Debbie Kelley.

Though mostly ignored by the left-leaning mainstream national media, students walked out of hundreds of schools throughout the country April 11 to protest abortion. Signs objected to federal funding of leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

“Every day, Planned Parenthood targets this generation in school and online to trap us in their predatory business cycle. And for many of us, every day, we are silent, but Enough is Enough,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, in a prepared statement.

Just as a Women’s March subsidiary organized the gun control walkout, Students for Life and other established right-leaning groups helped organize the abortion protest.

Harvard-bound Florida senior Blake Barclay tweeted: “So proud of the more than 60 students who participated in the #ProLifeWalkout from my high school. We are the #ProLifeGeneration.”

It is only a matter of time before pro-choice students walk out to advocate abortion rights and public funding of Planned Parenthood.

Aside from practical concerns, the protests have an enigmatic ability to simultaneously divide and unite our culture. They highlight complicated issues that separate friends, neighbors, relatives and colleagues.

Meanwhile, the demonstrations remind us of a radical American freedom cherished on the right, left and all points between. It is called free speech, ensconced in the First Amendment. It preserves our right to openly stand for a controversial cause – almost any cause – without fear of authoritarian reprisal.

God help us if any American demographic loses free speech. It will take more than a walkout to restore it.