We are transfixed by the passion and activism of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla. 

They refuse to be cowed by the bloody Valentine’s Day massacre at their high school in which a former student armed with an AR-15 military-style rifle killed 17 people and wounded the bodies and souls of hundreds of others. 

Instead, they are speaking out and demanding tougher gun laws in America so that students won’t have to be afraid to walk into schools every day worried whether someone with a weapon will open fire.

They are angered by local police and FBI missing and mishandling warnings about the 19-year-old perpetrator, Nikolas Cruz, and frustrated by the inaction of state and federal politicians.

So between the funerals for classmates and teachers, they are demonstrating outside the school and at the Florida statehouse. Through the power of social media, they have sparked protests by students at schools across the nation and kindled a nationwide student walkout on March 14. On March 24, they are planning “March for Our Lives” in Washington, all calling for tougher gun laws.

Their actions have attracted the backing of such big names as Oprah Winfrey, director Steven Spielberg and actor George Clooney. On Monday, and again on Wednesday, Washington high school students staged a lie-in outside the White House fence.

“If anything, we’re not going to let the 17 bullets we just took take us down,” Douglas High junior Cameron Kasky told the media on Sunday. “If anything, we’re going to keep running, and we’re going to lead the rest of the nation behind us.” 

Some people and politicians are quick to dismiss the efforts of the young people as a flash in the pan, noting that the flurry of effort for stricter gun laws following the horrific mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012 and at the country music concert in Las Vegas last October had no tangible results.

But while lawmakers in Congress and statehouses across the country, including Virginia, may be tone deaf, or bought and sold by the political donations of the National Rifle Association, the clear, compelling and impassioned arguments by the Florida students cannot be ignored. Time and again, this nation has witnessed the power of young people to effect change even when adults and old people cannot. 

Consider this:

• On April 23, 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns led a student walkout at Moton High School in Prince Edward County to protest the deplorable, substandard conditions at the racially segregated public school. That student strike against separate and unequal education led to the Virginia lawsuit that became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down racially segregated public schools.

• On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from North Carolina A&T College sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and asked to be served, challenging the store’s “whites-only” policy. Despite being hit, spit on and doused with ketchup, mustard, sugar and other condiments, the students, whose numbers grew, continued the sit-ins for six months until the store finally changed its policy. By June 1960, sit-ins and demonstrations led by students at 49 other colleges had erupted at segregated lunch counters and department store restaurants in 39 Southern cities, including Richmond. The students’ efforts were successful in overturning racist policies.

• On May 1, 1963, more than 1,000 students from elementary through high school skipped class and marched in downtown Birmingham, Ala., to end segregation. They defied their parents and school officials and were arrested by the hundreds. The next day when hundreds more students turned out in protest, police Commissioner Bull Connor responded with violence. Fire hoses and police dogs were turned on the students and billy clubs were used to beat and arrest them. The chilling, bloody images were broadcast across the nation. The Children’s March or Children’s Crusade, as it is now known, ended on May 10, 1963, when city officials promised to desegregate downtown stores and release all the protesters from jail.

• Student-led protests and demonstrations across the nation are credited with spurring the July 1971 change in the U.S. Constitution granting 18-year-olds the right to vote. Young people were angered that they could be drafted at 18 to fight and die in Vietnam, but weren’t allowed to vote. They wanted a voice in the political process and in selecting politicians who were deciding their fate. Through their activism, and the vote of the people in 38 states, the 26th Amendment became law of the land.

Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, more than 1,600 mass shootings — shootings of four or more people — have taken place in the United States. More than 1,800 people have been killed and more than 6,400 have been wounded.

Congress has refused to budge, even on basic, common sense gun control measures such as universal background checks for gun purchases and banning bump stocks used to turn semiautomatic weapons into automatic killing machines. Their failure to act to protect the people of this nation has jaded even the hardest-working adult activists.

That’s where the young people are important. We believe the Florida students’ actions and passion will galvanize the nation, leading to a sea change among even the most recalcitrant lawmakers.

As President Richard Nixon said in 1971 when he signed the 26th Amendment into law at a White House ceremony attended by 500 newly eligible 18-year-old voters: 

 “The reason I believe that your generation, the 11 million new voters, will do so much for America at home is that you will infuse into this nation some idealism, some courage, some stamina, some high moral purpose, that this country always needs.”

We believe in and support the courage and stamina of the young people from Florida, and call on every individual to support their high moral purpose to strengthen the gun laws in this nation. 

As they have said, “Enough is enough.” Tougher gun laws are what this country needs.