THESE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Another terrible mass school shooting.  This time it happened in Florida, with seventeen high school students killed by a nineteen year old former student with an AR-15 on February 14th.  At first, it looked like this tragedy was going to be treated like other recent high profile mass shooting: progressive politicians would call for more gun control, conservative politicians would say that "now is not the time to have this conversation", and that delay tactic would work so that no actual national gun control legislation could get passed. Eventually, the media would stop covering the shooting and move onto other things, and the country would brace itself for the next one.
But this time may be different.  This time, it appears that there is some genuine outrage that will not go away so easily.  The teenage students of the school are deciding not to mourn silently.  They are speaking out and they are getting organized.  Their outspoken passion and willingness to verbally confront politicians is impossible to ignore.  Will their anger result in some actual gun control legislation being passed?  Well, seeing as how we know have a Republican congress and president, the odds of anything changing in the near future are very low.  But their movement may have a lasting effect on voters in general.
One of the ways that the pro gun National Rifle Association  has held so much influence over the country's lack of gun laws is because most voters do not list gun control as a big issue for them, and those that do consider it an important issue are those voters on the same side as the NRA.  The gun rights people just have more passion on this issue; in 2012 after a similarly horrific shooting in Connecticut, then President Obama was unable to pass a weak expansion of background checks bill through congress, even though it's support was as high as 90% in some polls.  The Republicans who killed the bill knew full well that the voters who put them in office would continue to vote for them even if they agreed with the bill.  Again, passing gun control legislation was just not a major issue to their constituents. 
But that may change: what we could be seeing now from the students in Florida could be the beginning of a generational change on this issue.  Although the scary amount of guns owned in this country is somewhere around three hundred million, part of the reason for that high number is that many gun owners stock pile large amounts of guns.  Most polls show that individual gun ownership is actually going down in this country, with percentages somewhere between 30-40% being the number of gun owning households.  What this means is that you have a younger generation of Americans who are less likely to have guns in their house and are therefore less likely to have the almost romantic love of guns that many older Americans do.  And these young people are seeing the teens in Florida speaking out against NRA backed politicians, which may inspire them to do the same.
The Republican party has been scrambling to try and control this situation, with some going so far as to attack the children themselves as dupes for far left anti-gun groups.  And, somewhat inevitably, some conservative online groups have said that the shooting never happened, and that the outspoken teens are just paid actors! President Trump has been all over the map on this issue, as usual: first, he suggested that he was open to banning bump stocks that make rifles deadlier, and perhaps raising the age for rifle ownership from eighteen to twenty one.  But then he fell back on NRA talking points, saying that teachers should carry guns in the schools; he even went so far as to imply that teachers willing to carry guns could get a raise.  Yes, once again this country is hitting a new low: we have a president who's budget cuts funds to education, and who's party has attacked unionized jobs like teaching for years, but who thinks we should spend tax dollars on arming and training teachers, with the possibility of a little extra cash for those who do! 
The good news is that whileTrump and the Republicans may hold power for now, it appears that the tide of history is turning against them; every poll shows that younger Americans tend to more progressive than other voters on most issues, and the fact that they grew up with an African American as president, something unlikely to their parents and unthinkable to their grand parents, has shaped their opinions in ways unlike any other American generation before them.  Put simply, time is catching up to conservatives in this country, and the party that has had success of a mixture of race baiting, gay bashing and gun loving may soon have to adjust or become irrelevant.