Five Stoneman Douglas student activists speak out on ‘60 Minutes’

Five leaders of the #NeverAgain movement said Florida lawmakers get a C, or C-minus, grade for their response to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The panel of student survivors appeared Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. They reflected on their activism and the response from lawmakers after the Feb. 14 tragedy at the Parkland school.

“We can’t praise them for doing what they’ve done because that wouldn’t have stopped what happened at our school,” student activist Jaclyn Corin said about the school safety law Florida lawmakers passed three weeks after 17 students and staff were killed and 17 others were injured.

Corin was joined by other #Never Again leaders Emma Gonzalez, Alex Wind, David Hogg and Cameron Kasky.

The five student activists have been thrust into the national spotlight for their calls for gun control after the shooting. Former student Nikolas Cruz is facing 17 shooting.

Among the injured was Anthony Borges, 15, who remains hospitalized after being shot five times outside of a classroom. “He called me right at the moment he laid down on the floor and told me ‘Dad, I got shot,’” Borges’ father Royer told Alfonsi. “I just said ‘keep talking to me, OK, don’t go.’”

Florida prosecutors are planning to seek the death penalty for Cruz, which Gonzalez said was “good.”

But others thought Cruz should get life in prison. “Let him rot forever,” Kasky said.

“The death of one person, as terrible of a person as he is, cannot outweigh the death of the 17,” Wind said.

The students also criticized some of the reforms proposed by U.S. lawmakers, including giving guns to school staff — that idea is “stupid,” Gonzalez said.

“All of a sudden they have $400 million to pay for teachers to get trained to arm themselves? Really? Really?” Gonzalez said.

The students have been lauded for their social media savviness, which counts of murder for the the’ve leveraged to organize movement.

Kasky said they’ve accepted help where it’s needed — being underage, the students have had assistance getting hotels and permits in Washington, D.C., for Saturday’s March for Our Lives.

But Kasky said they’re cautious since “everybody has an agenda,” including some politicians who have asked the students to endorse their campaigns.

“You can support us all you want,” he said. “But if you think you can get your hands on our movement, it’s just not going to happen.” the #NeverAgain