“Well I called my congressman and he said quote, ‘I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’” Summertime Blues”, Eddie Cochran, (1958).

In the days since the latest school massacre, this one at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., I have become increasingly impressed with the maturity and commitment of the survivors as they speak truth to power about the need to rein in our wide-open gun laws.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is named for an environmentalist best known for calling for the protection of the Florida Everglades at a time when common wisdom considered the Everglades as “a worthless swamp.” It is more than a little ironic that history juxtaposed this woman with another historic event.

On the same day in 1993 that Marjory Stoneman Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, the highest civilian award that can be bestowed in the United States, she also was invited to witness the signing of the Brady Handgun Violence Act, which established a federal background check for those wanting to purchase a firearm.

This is the same background check an 18-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz successfully passed to purchase the AR 15 semi-automatic assault rifle that would later be used to gun down 14 students and three staff members at his former school.

It is equally ironic that, according to published reports, the Florida State Pension Fund holds more than 41,000 shares in American Outdoor Brands, formerly known as Smith and Wesson, one of the many manufacturers of the style of weapon used in the Parkland bloodbath.

In other words, the Florida State Pension fund was, or is, in effect funding a manufacturer of the type of weapon used to murder 17 members of one of its high school communities, whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But getting back to the surviving students …

After each of these incidents of societal mayhem, be it 49 revelers in a club in Orlando catering to the LGBT community, 58 country music fans at a concert in Las Vegas, 20 first-graders in Sandy Hook, or 17 youngsters and teachers in a high school in Parkland, we are subjected to the same shopworn and empty platitudes: “Our thoughts and prayers are with you” or “We ask that prayer will comfort you.”

I am reminded of a quote attributed to St. James the Apostle: “Faith without works is dead.”

This is why I so much respect the surviving Eagles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Prayer and condolences are not enough for them; for them, there must be concrete action.

“Shucking and jiving” can be defined as “the use of misleading or deceptive talk or behavior, as to give a false impression.”

Rather than falling for the shucking and jiving of elected politicians in the thrall of special interests, most notably the National Rifle Association, who would like to leave the impression that they really care, the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas are calling for an end to the BS.

Act to control the sale of weapons, often euphemistically called “modern sporting rifles,” whose only “sport” is to kill as many human beings as possible as quickly and efficiently as possible. Enact responsible gun safety legislation, or we are coming after you to end your amoral, or even immoral, political careers.

Politicians pay attention to those who can help them … or those who can hurt them. Today, many of the Marjory Douglas Stoneman kids are too young to vote, so all they are likely to get are empty words and patronizing expressions of sympathy.

Crocodile tears and sanctimonious cant. Cue “Summertime Blues.”

But their time, the time for the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas and their peers from one end of this conflicted country to the other, is a’coming—and very soon.

I am a boomer. In our day, back in the Sixties and early Seventies, many of us set out to change the world. Sad to say, all too often, the world changed us.

I wish today’s teens a better fate.

Learn from the failures, be self-effacing in the victories. Keep the faith. Keep your idealism. Don’t give up on your goal of a better, safer world – starting with America’s schools.

Good luck.

Make America proud.

“Well I called my congressman and he said quote, ‘I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’” Summertime Blues”, Eddie Cochran, (1958).

In the days since the latest school massacre, this one at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., I have become increasingly impressed with the maturity and commitment of the survivors as they speak truth to power about the need to rein in our wide-open gun laws.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is named for an environmentalist best known for calling for the protection of the Florida Everglades at a time when common wisdom considered the Everglades as “a worthless swamp.” It is more than a little ironic that history juxtaposed this woman with another historic event.

On the same day in 1993 that Marjory Stoneman Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, the highest civilian award that can be bestowed in the United States, she also was invited to witness the signing of the Brady Handgun Violence Act, which established a federal background check for those wanting to purchase a firearm.

This is the same background check an 18-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz successfully passed to purchase the AR 15 semi-automatic assault rifle that would later be used to gun down 14 students and three staff members at his former school.

It is equally ironic that, according to published reports, the Florida State Pension Fund holds more than 41,000 shares in American Outdoor Brands, formerly known as Smith and Wesson, one of the many manufacturers of the style of weapon used in the Parkland bloodbath.

In other words, the Florida State Pension fund was, or is, in effect funding a manufacturer of the type of weapon used to murder 17 members of one of its high school communities, whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But getting back to the surviving students …

After each of these incidents of societal mayhem, be it 49 revelers in a club in Orlando catering to the LGBT community, 58 country music fans at a concert in Las Vegas, 20 first-graders in Sandy Hook, or 17 youngsters and teachers in a high school in Parkland, we are subjected to the same shopworn and empty platitudes: “Our thoughts and prayers are with you” or “We ask that prayer will comfort you.”

I am reminded of a quote attributed to St. James the Apostle: “Faith without works is dead.”

This is why I so much respect the surviving Eagles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Prayer and condolences are not enough for them; for them, there must be concrete action.

“Shucking and jiving” can be defined as “the use of misleading or deceptive talk or behavior, as to give a false impression.”

Rather than falling for the shucking and jiving of elected politicians in the thrall of special interests, most notably the National Rifle Association, who would like to leave the impression that they really care, the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas are calling for an end to the BS.

Act to control the sale of weapons, often euphemistically called “modern sporting rifles,” whose only “sport” is to kill as many human beings as possible as quickly and efficiently as possible. Enact responsible gun safety legislation, or we are coming after you to end your amoral, or even immoral, political careers.

Politicians pay attention to those who can help them … or those who can hurt them. Today, many of the Marjory Douglas Stoneman kids are too young to vote, so all they are likely to get are empty words and patronizing expressions of sympathy.

Crocodile tears and sanctimonious cant. Cue “Summertime Blues.”

But their time, the time for the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas and their peers from one end of this conflicted country to the other, is a’coming—and very soon.

I am a boomer. In our day, back in the Sixties and early Seventies, many of us set out to change the world. Sad to say, all too often, the world changed us.

I wish today’s teens a better fate.

Learn from the failures, be self-effacing in the victories. Keep the faith. Keep your idealism. Don’t give up on your goal of a better, safer world – starting with America’s schools.

Good luck.

Make America proud.