Bill Murray Says Parkland Kids Remind Him of Students Who Helped End Vietnam War

"The thing that's so powerful about students is that when you haven't had your idealism broken yet, you're able to speak from a place that has no confusion, where there is a clear set of values," the actor says.

Bill Murray sees something in the students of Stoneman Douglas High School that remind him of the youth who rallied to end the Vietnam War.

In a recent op-ed for NBC News, the actor said we live in "interesting times," and he was blown away by the activism of young people all pulling toward a single goal: gun control.

A gunman opened fire at Stoneman Douglas on Feb. 14, killing 17 people and wounding more than a dozen others.

"I was thinking, looking at the kids in Parkland, Florida, who have started these anti-gun protests, that it really was the students that began the end of the Vietnam War," Murray said. "It was the students who made all the news, and that noise started, and then the movement wouldn't stop."

The comedian said he believes the "noise" the students are making now will get results.

"You've got to surround a deeply political issue like gun control or a war to come at it from every single direction," Murray said."You can't just focus on one thing or aim for just the one goal. Ending the Vietnam War was not a simple thing either: You had to make sure that all our people were safe — we had to make sure that they were as safe as you could be."

Murray recalled that some people thought losing the Vietnam War would be disastrous for our country. It wasn't.

"For children to be concerned about going to school, worried about what could happen to them at school, that makes for a horrible moment. It's just a horrible place for us to be at," he said. "The thing that's so powerful about students is that when you haven't had your idealism broken yet, you're able to speak from a place that has no confusion, where there is a clear set of values."

He continued, "But there are idealists left over the age of 18. I'm sure of it. Idealism is a voice that's inside of you; it's your conscience. That can really deteriorate along the way, depending on the road that you follow, and it can become almost dysfunctional, but it's there. Everyone has it. Sometimes it's just a whisper, but, in some people, it's a shout."