Sohn: Kid power makes us proud and safer

Staff photo by Doug Strickland / Demonstrators raise their fists during a moment of silence on the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse during the March for Our Lives on Saturday in Chattanooga. Thousands marched locally in solidarity with national protests against gun violence spurred by last month's school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Staff photo by Doug Strickland / Demonstrators raise their fists during a moment of silence on the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse during the March for Our Lives on Saturday in Chattanooga. Thousands marched locally in solidarity with national protests against gun violence spurred by last month's school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Once again, it was impossible Saturday not to be proud of America's teenagers.

This time, they took their insistence that we value them and their education over guns to the streets of Chattanooga, Boston, New York, Chicago, House, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. - along with lots of other Main Street, USA, cities in between.

The March for Our Lives movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of middle and high schoolers - along with their parents and grandparents - in a demand for common-sense gun control and to an end to gun violence. In Chattanooga, alone, at least a thousand young people and adults took to the streets, sparked by the Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that killed 17.

But it isn't just about protest.

Allen Liu, a senior at McCallie School and one of the leaders of Chattanooga Students Leading Change, and several other students met with staff members of Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker on Friday to call for a ban on assault rifles, closing loopholes on purchasing firearms, funding gun violence research and creating red flag laws to allow judges in some cases to issue restraining orders to remove access to guns from people believed to be capable of gun violence.

The students also have requested a meeting with Gov. Bill Haslam in April and plan to travel to Washington later next month to meet with Corker himself.

Don't let this go, kids. You are making a difference. Already. And you will make still more.

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