Therese Gachnauer, center, a 18 year old senior from Chiles High School and Kwane Gatlin, right, a 19 year old senior from Lincoln High School, both in Tallahassee, join fellow students protesting gun violence on the steps of the old Florida Capitol in Tallahassee on Wednesday.(AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser)Jaw set and eyes blazing, Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior Ryan Deitsch asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio this week why he and other students "have to march on Washington just to save innocent lives."
In other words, senator, why are high school children - children who've had a lifetime of active-shooter drills - having to be the grown-ups, the leaders, the purveyors of common-sense on gun laws.
Deitsch survived the Parkland, Fla., school shooting that left 17 dead, and it marked the second time Deitsch himself had to hide in his school from a gunman.
"These drills, code reds, active shooter - they've been a part of my life as long as I can remember," he said, adding that in the fifth grade, he hid in a bathroom with his teacher and 20 classmates for three hours after a shooter came to his town.
"Now seven years later, I'm in a closet with 19 other kids, waiting, fearing for my own life. Now we'd like to know, why do we have to be the ones to do this to march on Washington. "
The exchange was part of a town hall meeting hosted in Florida by CNN.
The meeting made it pretty clear these students-turned-gun-control advocates are nowhere near done asking their angry and straight-forward questions of Rubio and other lawmakers - questions like whether they will support banning assault-style rifles and turn down the National Rifle Association's blood money.
Rubio didn't say he'd give up the NRA's support. What's worse is Trump's pivot to embrace the NRA's solution: more guns. Trump wants to arm and gun-train 20 percent of our teachers.
Absolutely not! It's a terrible idea.
You can imagine that the next school shooter will find it convenient to just grab a gun straight from a teacher - no purchase required.
If arming teachers is Trump's best idea for school safety, how about we arm him - and all members of Congress - and reassign the Capitol police and Secret Service to guard our kids?
It's just another Trump "shiny object" dangle.
The right answers couldn't be more obvious. Just ask Ryan Deitsch and the other survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Ban military-style assault rifles and any attachments or ammo magazines that make ordinary guns more like wartime killing machines. Impose comprehensive background checks - including mental illness inquiries - on any and all gun sales.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Friday proposed raising the minimum age to buy any firearm, including semiautomatic rifles, to 21 from 18, a restriction opposed by the NRA. The minimum-age limit already exists for handguns.
Scott specifically rejected Trump's "arm-the-teachers" proposal, but Trump wasn't deterred.
"A 'gun free' school is a magnet for bad people," our president intoned Friday in a pathetic campaign-style speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington. Then Trump raised the stakes by playing the NRA's familiar 2nd Amendment card, saying that if Democrats win back control of Congress in the 2018 mid-term elections, "they'll take away your 2nd Amendment."
Not only is it not true. It's not doable. Two-thirds of the House and Senate would need to approve a proposed Constitutional amendment to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Even if that near- impossible vote happened, the proposed amendment would go to each of the 50 state legislatures, where it would face an up-or-down vote. Three-quarters of those states - 38 - would need to approve of the amendment repealing the 2nd Amendment. CNN notes "there is a 0 percent chance that 38 state legislatures would OK such a plan. Republicans currently have majorities in both the state House and state Senate in 32 states."
The NRA is clearly nervous and has telegraphed that to the president. The message and power of these students - the high schoolers sick of gunfire and drills - and their families is palpable. Our country hasn't seen a student movement like this probably since college-age kids took to the streets over Vietnam.
A poll by Quinnipiac University published nearly a week after the school shooting found that a stunning majority of Americans are in favor of more stringent gun laws. A whopping 97 percent of all respondents said they were in favor of universal background checks on all gun purchases, while 67 percent of all respondents said they were in favor of banning sales of assault weapons.
So godspeed to the young people of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who are channeling their fear and anger into political courage. The country is with them, even if their government is not.
Their "march on Washington" next month, dubbed March For Our Lives, may be the beginning of a better tomorrow.