Our view: Can student marchers ‘make history together’?

As tens of thousands of students gear up to march on Saturday in the nation’s capital and from Burlington, Vt., to Salem, Ore., a pivotal question looms: Can these young people push an immovable Congress to do more to fight gun violence?

Emma Gonzalez, 18, a survivor of the shooting at Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., tweeted Thursday that the students are going to “make history together.”

They have already had some successes. They’ve focused the nation’s all-too-short attention span for more than a month on the massacre of 17 students and teachers at their high school. And they’ve beaten the odds in the Florida Legislature, which raised the age to 21 to buy assault-style weapons, over opposition from the National Rifle Association.

Now comes the hard part, moving spineless lawmakers on Capitol Hill to fill yawning gaps in the nation’s gun laws. Adults have tried, without success, to do that for years, most notably after 20 children and six educators were gunned down in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

More mass shootings were followed by more shameful failures. Congress couldn’t even muster a ban on "bump stocks," which turn semiautomatic weapons into even more efficient killing machines, after 58 were slaughtered in Las Vegas last fall.

Since the Parkland massacre on Valentine’s Day, lawmakers have been too busy pounding out a budget and satisfying their allies in the banking industry to deal much with the 17 dead. The best they could do was attach a bipartisan measure to improve the national background check system, a muchneeded but relatively minimal change, to the must-pass budget bill.

Between now and the midterm elections, students might do best by focusing on the states, where advocates for change have had more luck, pushing through 210 new laws since 2013.

Some of the most important are gun violence restraining orders (as a way to remove firearms from people who might hurt themselves or others); background checks for all gun sales, not just those by licensed dealers; and bans on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, which have become weapons of choice for spree killers.

The states remain a focus of pitched battles between gun control advocates and the NRA, which has pushed to enact 380 laws since 2013.

To make a lasting difference, students will need to turn their passion into votes. Some are too young to do so right now, but many are not. In Austin, march leaders planned voter registration stations at the beginning and end points of their march. Smart move.

Nicole Hockley, who lost her son, Dylan, at Sandy Hook and joined the gun safety movement, advised Florida students not to get stuck in the constant, demoralizing fight but to savor “the wins along the way.”

America can only hope that these young people, the future of the country, can amass some wins and succeed where their elders have failed.

JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES