John Paul Stevens: “Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.”

“That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”

[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]Stevens, of course, is a retired U.S. Supreme Court justice.[/alert]

James Hohmann: “A key reason the protests against the war in Vietnam were so much more potent than against the war in Iraq is that there was a draft back then.”

“Millions of young people lived in fear that they — or someone they loved — would have their number called, and they’d be shipped off against their will to the rice paddies and jungles of a faraway land for a cause they felt was unjust and futile. From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. military conscripted 2.2 million men — boys, really — out of an eligible pool of 27 million. This helped fuel the mass movement against the war.”

“Young people today aren’t worried about being drafted to fight Kim Jong Un in North Korea. But many are palpably concerned that they or someone they know could get shot at school. High-profile incidents, culminating with last month’s shooting in Parkland, Fla., have shaken many middle-class kids, who would not otherwise be inclined to activism, out of their suburban comfort zones.”

“The March for Our Lives was so big on Saturday because the fears are so personal.”

Gov. John Kasich (R) told CNN that lawmakers should be held accountable during this fall’s midterm elections for their inaction on gun laws following a number of high-profile mass shootings around the country.

Said Kasich: “I think people should be held absolutely accountable at the ballot box.”

At the March for Our Lives rally, Emma Gonzalez named the murdered Parkland victims and observed several minutes of silence in a 6-minute, 20-second speech that covered the same time it took the gunman to kill 17 people in her high school.

“Standing before vast crowds from Washington to Los Angeles to Parkland, Fla., the speakers — nearly all of them students, some still in elementary school — delivered an anguished and defiant message: They are ‘done hiding’ from gun violence, and will ‘stop at nothing’ to get politicians to finally prevent it,” the New York Times reports.

“The students, as they seized the nation’s attention on Saturday with raised fists and tear-streaked faces, vowed that their grief about school shootings and their frustration with adults’ inaction would power a new generation of political activism.”

A new Associated Press-NORC poll finds that 69% of Americans now favor stricter gun control measures. That’s up from 61% who said the same in October of 2016 and 55% when the AP first asked the question in October of 2013.

Overall, 90% of Democrats, 54% of gun owners and 50% of Republicans now favor stricter gun control laws.

I’ll be joining March For Our Lives today to demand that our lawmakers take real steps to end gun violence in our schools and communities.

Please join us at an event near you.

“What we’re doing is because we’re not scared of these adults, because we have nothing to lose, we don’t have an election to lose, we don’t have a job to lose — we just have our lives to lose.”

— High School junior and March for Our Lives organizer Jaclyn Corin, quoted by the New York Times.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) blasted the national student walkout as a “shameful” attempt by left-wing groups to push their own political agenda, The Hill reports.

Said McMaster: “This is a tricky move, I believe, by a left-wing group, from the information I’ve seen, to use these children as a tool to further their own means. It sounds like a protest to me. It’s not a memorial, it’s certainly not a prayer service, it’s a political statement by a left-wing group and it’s shameful.”

“President Trump has abandoned his live-on-television promise to work for gun control measures that are opposed by the National Rifle Association, instead bowing to the gun group and embracing its agenda of armed teachers and incremental improvements to the existing background check system,” the New York Times reports.

Said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): “To no one’s surprise, the president’s words of support for stronger gun safety laws proved to be hollow. Responding to the murder of 17 students and educators by endorsing the gun lobby’s platform is a shameful abdication of the president’s responsibility to lead. Shame on you, Mr. President.”

“The White House on Sunday vowed to help provide ‘rigorous firearms training’ to some schoolteachers and formally endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background checks system, but it backed off President Trump’s earlier call to raise the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old” the Washington Post reports.

“Responding directly to last month’s gun massacre at a Florida high school, the administration rolled out several policy proposals that focus largely on mental health and school safety initiatives. The idea of arming some teachers has been controversial and has drawn sharp opposition from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers lobby, among other groups. Many of the student survivors have urged Washington to toughen restrictions on gun purchases, but such measures are fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association, and the Trump plan does not include substantial changes to gun laws.”