Students cut Trump down to size on guns

CRUSHED by heartbreak and grief, they came to Washington to see the most powerful man in the world. By the time the teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were finished, it was Donald Trump who looked diminished and cut down to size. The courage of the survivors has won the respect and admiration of people around the world, and put the famously implacable and indifferent gun lobby onto the back foot. Often dismissed as being obsessed with online memes, makeup and music, these youths have forced older heads to take heed. They have galvanised and mobilised Americans into recognising that the mass-shooting mayhem has gone on for long enough.

Mr Trump’s asinine suggestion that the answer to the carnage in schools is to arm teachers will be seen for what it is, morally bankrupt and shamefully inadequate.

The lesson which might have been learned at Columbine or Sandy Hook, but clearly wasn’t, that access to lethal weapons makes it too easy to kill and maim, may finally be filtering through, but only thanks to these heroic teenagers from Florida.

Years of timorous petitioning for legislation that would take automatic weapons and their ilk off the shelves may show some results. It should never have taken the lives of 17 children to make the case, but their deaths would take on real significance if their classmates’ commendable stance gets the response it deserves.