Jonathan Soros is CEO of JS Capital Management LLC and a member of the board of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) Students of all ages last week joined their courageous and eloquent peers from Parkland, Florida in protest. They are showing us that the damage from school shootings is not only the tragic loss of young lives, but also the pervasive fear that exists in modern American schools, where "active shooter" drills embed terror the way that "duck and cover" once did.

As the anger and frustration of this school shooting generation resonate across the country, these students give us hope that maybe, just maybe, their growing national movement will finally loosen the literally life-crushing grip that the gun lobby has on our politics.

Jonathan Soros

But while the debate over how to end school shootings is essential and overdue, we must remember that this is not the first time that gun violence in Florida has sparked a national movement -- and that the concerns of that movement have not yet been fully addressed.

In 2012, a brave and eloquent group of young black Floridians calling themselves the Dream Defenders staged extensive and persistent protests of the state's so-called " Stand Your Ground " law. The law allows the use of deadly force in public when used in self-defense -- even if retreating to avoid using force is possible -- and became a focus of outrage after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager. The hashtag #blacklivesmatter was first used to organize following Zimmerman's acquittal, planting the seed for the national movement that followed.

The Black Lives Matter protests captured the anger and frustration of communities that have long endured an unequal risk of violence and the injustice of discriminatory public policies, like stop and frisk, that often increase rather than mitigate that risk. With repeated exposure to shocking videos of unjust killings followed by little accountability, many white Americans unfamiliar with that reality developed a new, visceral connection to the fear and pain that many people of color have always lived with.

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