Last night, CNN aired a live town hall with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School community—where last week one of the nation's deadliest school shootings took place—asking questions of politicians including Senator Marco Rubio, and the kids’ candor, emotion, poise, eloquence, humor and thoroughness were an inspiration to us all. I’m more afraid of high school students than I’ve ever been, and for once, that’s good news.

Rubio joined the other Florida Senator Bill Nelson and Rep. Ted Deutch, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman, for the first few segments, and in his opening statements he called for mercy and restraint.

“We are a nation of people who have stopped being friends with people because of who they voted for in the last election,” he said, “We are a nation of people who have isolated ourselves to only watch channels that tell us that we're right. We're a nation of people that have isolated ourselves politically and to a point where discussions like this have become very difficult.”

And then Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in last week’s massacre, took the microphone, and you could pinpoint the exact moment when Marco Rubio learned the definition of the word “difficult.”



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Father of Florida school shooting victim confronts Sen. Marco Rubio: "Your comments this week and those of our President have been pathetically weak" https://t.co/puYEwpdgTl #StudentsStandUp https://t.co/AC5Zh1NuJa — CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2018

Needless to say, he couldn’t. Rubio could not bring himself to support a ban on assault rifles, insisting that such bans are too riddled with loopholes to be effective, and expressing no clear desire to rewrite those bans to tighten those loopholes.

Rubio’s night didn’t get any better when Douglas High School junior Cameron Kasky took the stage. Kasky began politely, thanking Rubio for making the trip when President Trump and Florida Governor Rick Scott wouldn’t. But then he looked him right in the eye and asked one simple question:

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Florida school shooting survivor Cameron Kasky challenges Sen. Marco Rubio: "Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?" https://t.co/LiU42QFBEv #StudentsStandUp https://t.co/p6jlUGFxOs — CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2018

Again, Rubio couldn’t. He sputtered something about the NRA buying into his agenda, rather than him being bought into theirs. But Kasky did something nobody else on CNN seems to have been capable of doing lately: He asked a smart follow-up question: “Isn’t your agenda to help us?” It was petulant and impolite and exactly correct, and Rubio had no clear answer.

Throughout the night, the kids actually got the man to say he’d reconsider some positions, to announce that he’d think about a ban on large capacity magazines, to say out loud that he doesn’t agree with our president that teachers should also be snipers, to admit that none of this is nearly enough, as he did when senior Ryan Deitsch shook his head after one of Rubio’s canned answers and said: “This sounds like the first step of a 5k.”

God help me, these kids are my heroes.

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Would you agree that there's no place in our society for large capacity magazines?



Rubio: I traditionally haven't supported it but “after this and some of the details I learned ... I am reconsidering that position” https://t.co/1zo7oRaJHW #StudentsStandUp https://t.co/lzGQlSPytq — CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2018

And then NRA spokesghoul Dana Loesch showed up and things got very weird. Emma Gonzalez, the Douglas senior whose speech last week galvanized the #NeverAgain movement, asked her whether it should be harder or easier to obtain semi-automatic weapons. Not only did Loesch fail to provide a good answer, but she also gave the night its one perfect laugh line. See if you can spot it.

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Student Emma Gonzalez: Do you believe it should be harder to obtain semi-automatic weapons?



NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch: "I don't believe that this insane monster should have ever been able to obtain a firearm" https://t.co/V50uSUR7r8 #StudentsStandUp https://t.co/P5Sioleoss — CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2018

The crowd openly laughed right at Loesch when she held herself up as the kind of success Gonzalez could become if she worked hard enough. Keep speaking your mind, kid, and someday you too can be the dead-eyed shill for a fear-mongering death cult. Dream big!

Later, Douglas High School history teacher Diane Wolk Rogers went full high school history teacher on Loesch, who did not come to this oral exam prepared.





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A teacher asks the NRA spokeswoman explain how she defines a “well-regulated militia” and how “an 18-year-old with a military rifle" is well-regulated



Dana Loesch: He should have been barred from getting a firearm https://t.co/k8U0ap8QAt #StudentsStandUp https://t.co/XmR7ysiAem — CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2018

There were moments when this thing felt like the Comedy Central Roast of Gun Culture. Honestly, I was expecting Anthony Jeselnik to take the stage for a tight ten.

Now, I can hear the arguments against this approach already: shouldn’t we wait until we calm down a bit before we have these discussions? Aren’t these kids, parents, and teachers too traumatized to do this properly? Isn’t it all too emotional? Well, yes. But fear is an emotion too, and if you don’t think Dana Loesch and the NRA are exploiting Americans’ fears of gangs, immigrants, and an over-reaching government to sell more guns, you’re not paying attention. Of course it was emotional, and of course it was disrespectful. It should be.

As usual, nobody got it wronger than America’s large adult son, the conservative commentator Todd Starnes, who entered the Ratio Hall of Fame with this classic:

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Parents, what would you do if your child lectured and ridiculed a U.S. Senator on national television? — toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) February 22, 2018

Emotion can be quite a clarifying thing. Sometimes it’s when you’re absolutely fed up that the world gets pulled into focus. Sometimes it’s when you see through the impatient, disapproving eyes of a high school kid that you notice what’s really wrong, and how obvious the fixes are. Not easy, but obvious.

We’ve been arguing this stuff for decades. Maybe all it took this whole time was the reproachful gaze of a teenage girl with a shaved head.

Dave Holmes Editor-at-Large Dave Holmes is Esquire's L.A.-based editor-at-large.

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