Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school accused the National Rifle Association on Sunday of exploiting people’s fears to sell weapons and criticized the Trump administration for its stuttering response to last month’s gun rampage in Florida, which left 14 of their peers and three teachers dead.

Hours after hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets of cities and towns across the US, as well as in several locations around the world, to call for action to curb gun violence, student survivors of the 14 February mass shooting in Parkland appeared on talkshows to press home their point.

The students were scathing about the NRA’s influence on the national debate, and expressed profound disappointment about what they perceive as the lack of a meaningful action from Washington.

“The NRA are fearmongers,” said Cameron Kasky, a Parkland survivor and one of the organizers of Saturday’s historic March for Our Lives. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, and wearing a #MSDStrong T-shirt to underline the resilience of the new movement his school has spawned, he charged the NRA with wanting “to sell weapons by exploiting people’s fears. The second we try to put commonsense regulations on these assault weapons the NRA will say they are trying to steal your guns – fortunately people see past this.”

Play Video 2:47 Why is the NRA so powerful? – video

Stoneman Douglas students were equally excoriating about the record of state and federal politicians in tackling the issue of gun violence since the shooting. Jaclyn Corin, the school’s class president, told CBS’s Face the Nation that she was unimpressed by the Stop School Violence Act that was included in the $1.3tn omnibus spending bill passed on Friday.



Yesterday, we Parkland students made history. And we're not going anywhere Read more

The legislation, she said, “doesn’t even mention the word ‘gun’ once. School safety is important, but [gun violence] doesn’t just happen in schools, it’s a public safety issue not a schools safety issue. We need to fight the problem from the core, which is guns.”

The students spoke a day after the largest outpouring of public protest over America’s lax gun laws in living memory. Hundreds of thousands of young people marched in more than 800 towns and cities across the US and around the world, directing a powerful roar for change at Congress members and the NRA lobbyists that exert outsized sway on so many of them.

Survivors and victims’ relatives from the sorry litany of US gun rampages came together at the Washington march, neatly illustrating the extraordinary cost of America’s fixation with the gun as well as the almost total lack of legislative measures over many years to stem the bloodletting. In addition to the leaders from the Parkland shooting, which occurred five weeks ago, there were survivors of rampages in: Las Vegas (five months ago), Orlando (21 months), Sandy Hook ( five years), Tucson (seven years), Virginia Tech (11 years) and Columbine (19 years) – and many more.

Now that the dust has settled over the March for Our Lives, the newly emboldened youth activists from Parkland, Florida, and across the nation are faced with the arguably more difficult challenge of sustaining their nascent #NeverAgain movement and translating it into concrete change. Student leaders have begun to articulate their demands, focusing on a nationwide ban on assault weapons with high-capacity magazines of the sort used to commit the Stoneman Douglas massacre, raising the age at which rifles can be bought to 21 and introducing universal background checks on all gun sales.

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A limited version of some of these demands has already been enacted in Florida, though the NRA immediately filed a lawsuit attempting to block the reforms.

The second major task for the activists following Saturday’s marches is to mobilize young voters for the November midterm elections. Though they do not plan to endorse specific candidates, they do intend to encourage young Americans to register to vote and to consider gun controls as a priority issue when they cast their ballots.

Emma Gonzalez, who made one of the most powerful presentations at the Washington march, in which she remained largely silent through 6 minutes and 20 seconds – the duration of in the Parkland shooting – said that they were now “revving up for the election”. The Stoneman Douglas pupil told Face the Nation that “this is not the end, this was just the beginning”.

Apathy among young eligible voters is a chronic problem in the US, with less than one in five 18-29 year olds bothering to go to the polling stations in the last mid-term elections four years ago. That was the lowest turnout for the age group in 40 years.

“The voter turnout for our age is embarrassing,” Kasky said. “This movement has so many people realizing it’s important to get out to the polls.”

The students may yet discover that the NRA makes for a formidable opponent. Face the Nation spoke to Joni Ernst, the Republican US senator from Iowa who is one of the top 10 recipients of NRA cash. Ernst denied she received more than $3m from the pro-gun lobbyist in the 2016 cycle, insisting the money went to outside groups supporting her campaign.

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“Every citizen, as long as they are law-abiding, has the right to exercise their second amendment rights,” she said, repeating one of the NRA’s most popular refrains.

Meanwhile the pope seemed to refer to the demonstrations on Sunday when he addressed tens of thousands for a Palm Sunday service in St Peter’s Square.

“The temptation to silence young people has always existed,” Pope Francis said.

“There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive.

“Dear young people, you have it in you to shout,” he said, without mentioning the anti-gun protests in the US directly. “It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: will you cry out?”

The young people in the crowd shouted: “Yes!”