WASHINGTON—The American teenagers who thronged the streets of their capital on Saturday came armed with the boundless hope of young idealists. And, as backup, the threats of savvy realists.

They chanted about the guns they want to ban and the lobby group they want to defeat and the politicians they would, ideally, like to persuade. Knowing they might not succeed, not right now, what they chanted most frequently was a promise to punish the officials who refuse to listen.

“Vote them out!” they cried, over and over, on a dozen jam-packed blocks of Pennsylvania Ave., the street that connects Republican President Donald Trump’s White House with the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress. “Vote them out!”

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The extraordinary turnout at Washington’s March for Our Lives and at sister rallies across the country offered a vivid demonstration of a new student-fuelled momentum for the tightening of U.S. gun laws.

The main event was too successful to be an actual moving march. Instead, well over 500,000 people stood shoulder to shoulder, boyish middle-schoolers beside weathered activists awed by them, and listened to the fiery new leaders of the gun control movement, none of whom has turned 20.

Famous entertainers performed but did not give extended speeches. The headliners here were the organizers: survivors of the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, whose sights were squarely set on the 2018 and 2020 elections.

“We will get rid of these public servants that only serve the gun lobby,” said David Hogg. “And we will save lives.”

“Politicians: either represent the people or get out,” said Cameron Kasky. “The people demand a law banning the sale of assault weapons. The people demand we prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines. The people demand universal background checks. Stand for us or beware. The voters are coming.”

The push for change that started with the massacre of 17 people at Douglas in February has already achieved a smattering of legislative success at the state level, and it appeared to prod Trump into action to pursue a regulatory ban on bump stocks. But it seems highly unlikely that there will be any real legislative action at the federal level while Republicans are in control.

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Political analysts, and many Republicans, believe a Democratic wave is possible in the 2018 congressional mid-terms. Young people tend to vote at by far the lowest rates. But the young people at the march said their peers are unusually motivated at the moment, furious both at Trump in general and specifically at Republican inaction on guns.

“Right now there are definitely some obstacles, but if this generation’s voting turns out anything like this protest did, then I have a pretty good feeling,” said Zoe Afful, 23, a university student from Maryland who was persuaded to attend by her 18-year-old sister, Bethel Afful.

The Douglas students shared the stage with students who have experienced gun violence of lower-profile kinds. Edna Chavez, a 17-year-old from South Los Angeles, spoke of the murder of her brother in the “normal” daily fashion experienced by Black and Hispanic young people, “normal to the point that I learned to duck from bullets before I learned how to read.” Mya Middleton, a 16-year-old from Chicago, spoke of a thief in a store holding a gun to her face and threatening to find her if she ever said something.

“And yet I’m still saying something today,” she said.

An urban youth group in Boston brought 150 children to the march. Perhaps three quarters of them had personal experience with gun violence, said Sydnee Young-Brown, 26, one of their march guardians.

“This kind of stuff happens in the inner city all the time. I think we’re coming not only to stand in solidarity with people that have lost their lives in schools but also that have lost their lives on our streets,” she said.

The crowd skewed young, but older people marched too, some of them roped into attending by children and grandchildren. Mary Reinman, a 61-year-old from Charlottesville, Va. who was an anti-war protester in her youth, held a sign with a slogan borrowed from a tweet by Douglas activist Sarah Chadwick.

“I am so inspired by these kids. They’re fearless. They’re articulate. They’re bright. I’m just astounded,” Reinman said.

Almost all Republican members of Congress were silent on the marches. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio commended the protesters but said “many other Americans” see “banning guns as an infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens that ultimately will not prevent these tragedies.”

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Democratic former president Barack Obama offered encouragement.

“Michelle and I are so inspired by all the young people who made today’s marches happen. Keep at it. You’re leading us forward. Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,” he said on Twitter.

Students in the crowd carried comedic memes denouncing the National Rifle Association, the country’s chief gun-rghts lobby group, and mocking Trump, who did not immediately comment from his weekend retreat in Florida. But they also carried signs expressing despondence, frustration and fear.

“We are the future, and we are scared,” read Corina Tipton’s.

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Students from low-crime small towns and high-crime big cities alike said they had long been frightened at school. Tipton, 16, of a rural and suburban Maryland county, said her classmates have been spending spare moments in class “trying to come up with all of the best ways to hide if there were an active shooter.”

“Someone will look toward the stack of textbooks in the corner and will be like, ‘Hey do you think you can remove the ceiling tiles and climb up there if there’s an active shooter?” she said.

Other students had already suffered at the hands of shooters. Zion Foster, 16, took a bus 12 hours from Ohio to march with a sign vowing that his 2020 vote would be taken from his “cold, dead hand,” a reference to an NRA slogan.

His friend JoJo Holloway, 17, was shot dead in her apartment in October.

“I just want to do what I can for her,” Foster said.

The most emotional moment of the day was provided by Emma Gonzalez, the Douglas student who has become the most prominent of the accidental activists.

Gonzalez named the murdered classmates who would no longer get to do what they had always done: “Helena Ramsay would never hang around after school with Max, Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch … Peter Wang would never, Alyssa Alhadeff would never, Jamie Guttenberg would never, Meadow Pollack would never … .”

Then she abruptly stopped talking.

She stared straight ahead, occasionally closing her teary eyes, until an alarm beeped to tell her she had been on stage for six minutes and twenty seconds, the length of the massacre.

“Fight for your life before it’s somebody else’s job,” Gonzalez concluded.

Thousands of people sobbed.

Then, a minute or so later, students watching on one of the screens on Pennsylvania Ave. started chanting again: “Vote them out!”