Florida students not backing off push for gun regulations

The student-driven movement to rewrite gun laws showed no sign of waning a week after a gunman killed 17 people at a Florida school, with politicians yielding to pressure to respond.

The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said Thursday that as the 50th anniversary of her father’s assassination approaches, she hopes we can “look toward solutions as these young people are forcing us to have the conversations, bipartisan conversations.’’

Speaking at The King Center in Atlanta, King said tragedy “gives us an opportunity to lay aside for a moment our differences and really look at how we can come together as humanity and move forward with these injustices and these evils that continue to beset us.’’

The survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School have vowed to continue their activism, including a “March for Our Lives’’ in Washington next month, which King says she’ll attend.

At a funeral for slain football coach Aaron Feis, retired school groundsmen Dave Tagliavia said he thinks the students mean what they say and won’t back down.

“I think if changes are going to be made, these kids are going to do it. They’ve got fire in their eyes,’’ he said.

A day after an emotional meeting with survivors and their families, President Donald Trump tweeted his strongest stance yet on gun control. He said he would endorse strengthening background checks, banning “bump stock’’ style devices and raising the minimum age to 21 for buying certain rifles.