America's partisan standoff over gun regulation has made pawns of the nation's youth, the heads of two companies that supported tighter firearm restrictions complained Tuesday.

"Let's just make these changes and make them now," Mark Bertolini, the former CEO of insurer Aetna before its merger with CVS Health that closed last week, said at a Washington, D.C., conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal. "We should never feel like our children are political chips in a battle over legislation."

Ed Stack, the CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods, concurred. "Our kids are a political pawn," he said during a panel discussion with Aetna's Bertolini.

Both companies have supported a crackdown on firearms in the wake of mass shootings including one at a Florida high school on Valentine's Day that left 17 people dead. Dick's raised the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 afterward, a move the company recently said led to lower sales. Dick's also started to push for stricter laws in Washington, with little effect so far.

"Are you listened to? Yes. Is anything going to happen? No," Stack told attendees. "Both sides talk to their bases when something like this happens, as opposed to coming together."

Aetna donated $200,000 to a firearm reform rally and banned political donations to individuals with a favorable rating from the National Rifle Association after two of its employees were killed during a shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016.

Bertolini said he called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky after the Pulse shooting to urge him to advance firearm legislation.

"It hasn't worked," he said. "We're still in this place."