Student activists continued to make progress on Friday on a 50-mile march that will bring them to the headquarters of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson in Springfield, Massachusetts this weekend.

Launched on Wednesday, the local chapter of the 50 Miles More campaign, part of a national effort to confront gun violence in America, saw some 40 students setting off from Worcester. They trekked through the hills of central Massachusetts, across farm country, down streets lined with American flags.

At midday on Friday, the group wound their way into the town square of bucolic Warren, trailed by a military-style Hummer police vehicle. They were met by a support group of adults with bagged lunches, and a handful of counter-protesters.

The latter group were eager for a glimpse of David Hogg, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and a leader of the March for Our Lives campaign.

“We’ve gotten a lot of great support along the march,” Jack Torres, a junior at Somerville high school, explained along the way. “People coming off the road, giving us donations, encouraging us, people coming out of their houses clapping. That’s what keeps us going.”

People giving us donations, encouraging us, coming out of their houses clapping. That keeps us going Jack Torres

Classmate Felix Brody added: “I think the people are inspiring us and we’re inspiring them.”

They had received a particularly meaningful message of support earlier that morning, from the spouse of someone who marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, the civil rights action on which 50 Miles More is based.

Katie Eder, leader of the 50 Miles More national campaign, is a recent high school graduate from Wisconsin, where the group marched to the home of House speaker Paul Ryan earlier this year. She said they simply want to hear something back from Smith & Wesson. Its weapons have been used in mass shootings throughout the US, she pointed out, from Parkland to Aurora to San Bernardino.

The group has two messages it hopes to deliver to Smith & Wesson. First is a request that the company cease the manufacture of weapons outlawed under the 2004 Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban.

“Smith & Wesson produces weapons that are illegal in Massachusetts then ships them throughout the country, and those [guns] take peoples lives,” Eder said. “That needs to stop.”

The group would also like to see the company donate $5m to research violence involving its weapons.

“Gun violence is an epidemic and it deserves to be researched and looked at like any other epidemic would,” Eder said.

David Hogg: ‘People think we’ve gotten a little hate here, but if this was in Texas we’d be flanked by people open-carrying AR-15s on the side of the road.’ Photograph: Katherine Taylor/EPA

Although locals had been largely receptive to the message of the march, that morning the marchers had heard the president’s name shouted from passing cars.

“That was nothing,” Hogg said, after a discussion with a woman who was waving an oversized Donald Trump flag under a monument dedicated to locals killed in the civil war.

The woman, he said, wanted to know why Hogg refused to meet the president shortly after the shooting in which 17 of his classmates and school staff were murdered. The woman, who declined to provide her name, walked off, seemingly placated. A second counter-protester argued heatedly with adult supervisors.

“People think we’ve gotten a little hate here, but if this was in Texas we’d be flanked by people open-carrying AR-15s on the side of the road,” Hogg said, as the march continued north towards Springfield.

“I hope Smith & Wesson realize they can become a responsible gun manufacturer. They could start making guns with finger print [technology] again, for example.”

He and the group have no problem with the second amendment, they all agreed. They simply take issue with how it’s regulated.

“We don’t have universal background checks; we need to invest in violence intervention programs,” Hogg said. “These shootings don’t just happen in high schools, they happen every day. We need people like the president to realize this is not just Parkland, this is Boston, this is all the different cities that we’re with.”

Asked what he wanted Smith & Wesson to hear when the group arrives on Sunday, Brody said it was “OK to be a gun manufacturer and be against gun violence.

“You can be a part of the solution. If you’re truly who you say you are, you haven’t acted like it. It’s time to step up and be the first gun manufacturer to say you’re against gun violence, and mean it and show it.”

The sun beat down, and the students seemed tired. But they trudged on with purpose, Torres said.

“There’s times where we’ve thought this is too tiring,” he said. “We’ve all got sore feet. But we keep reminding each other that if we walk, if we stay strong, if we keep sending our message, we won’t know who or where or when, but we might save a life. That’s enough to keep us going.”