But she is no less serious about shaking up the system, and she is crystal clear about the message that she and her fellow survivors want to send political leaders and the public more broadly: “That this change will not be pushed to the side. We will not just be another statistic. We will NOT stop until we see change!”

It’s hard not to be awed by the Stoneman Douglas students. They have been through a trauma that would leave most adults curled in a prenatal pretzel under the bed. But these teens have elbowed their way into one of this nation’s most vicious policy debates, demanding to have their say. As Emma Gonzalez, a Stoneman Douglas senior, explained at a rally last Saturday: “Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together, because if all our government and president can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.”

Such efforts by survivors have rightly captured the public’s attention. Already they have traveled to Tallahassee, Florida, and Washington, D.C. to make their case for stricter gun laws. They have organized protests and marches and rallies that, thanks to social media, have spawned similar efforts. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are precisely the type of self-confident, socially aware teens poised to change the gun-control debates across the nation. They have raised $3.7 million for future events. (Here in suburban Washington, D.C., my son and his friends are keeping close tabs on multiple walkouts and marches currently in the works.) They have given speeches and interviews, written op-eds, and gone toe-to-toe on national TV with pro-gun politicians and activists. They have used social media to respond to snarky critics. They have Twitter-smacked Fox News bomb-thrower Tomi Lahren and succeeded (with the help of their legion of social-media followers) in extracting an apology from the professional provocateur Dinesh D’Souza. More satisfying still, when far-right conspiracy mongers started vomiting nonsense about false-flag operations and claiming that some of the survivors were actually “crisis actors,” the survivors stuffed the nutters’ words right back down their throats. These kids are masters of social media. They aren’t going to take any crap from the kooks and trolls.

Jaded political and media types have been especially impressed. Every time you check the news, some elected official or journalist or pundit or reform advocate is publicly marveling at how these teens are a force unlike anything the gun debate has ever before witnessed. “Why the Parkland Kids May Be Different,” teased a Washington Post headline. “I’ve been covering mass shootings for decades. I’ve never seen a phenomenon like these students,” declared the subhead of a Politico piece. (Got a few hours to kill? Just google Parkland and different for an avalanche of news and commentary.) Even members of Congress are chiming in. “There just seems to be a lot more determination to get something done—to finally get something done,” the Democrat Mike Thompson told The Hill on Tuesday. “Maybe it’s the organic nature, I’m not sure, but it just feels different. And God knows we need it to be different.”