It didn’t take Wayne LaPierre, director of the National Rifle Association, long after the Parkland school shooting to reaffirm that the NRA still believes guns are more important than people.

The NRA resists any effort to make it more difficult for anyone to buy assault rifles. To seriously tighten background checks. And to ban anything to do with guns. Honest to God, their solution to deadly mass shootings is to give more people more guns.

President Trump put up a front of listening to students yesterday, but the only thing he seems genuinely committed to is arming teachers. And paying the ones who become shooters a bonus. That’s a great idea. Teachers already have too much to do just to teach, and they’re seriously underpaid. Now Trump wants to give them more money but only if they are carrying? There are so many things wrong about that. Get serious. That’s the proposal from people who don’t give a damn about massacred children. Like Wayne LaPierre, for instance, a radicalized paranoiac who ought to be chained up somewhere quiet.

So where are the adults in this discussion. It turns out the adults ARE the children: the strong, clarion voices of the survivors and other teens who say the time is now to end this foolishness. Lawmakers are cowards for the most part, craven in their fealty to the NRA and voters in their districts who are outspoken about using assault weapons in their daily lives.

Let’s hope the kids can drive this home: there is no further excuse for inaction. Those of us who demand more gun control measures — no, we’re not taking away people’s guns, only inserting means of controlling the uncontrolled slaughter of our citizens — have got to make it clear to our legislators that there is no more important issue for them to confront. It is time to stop treating guns and the right-wing gun-owners as if they matter to lawmakers. There are far more of us Americans who want sanity back in our gun laws, and if our lawmakers won’t do that, we must drive them out of office. Americans by a whopping majority want tougher gun laws that will protect people, and that is a far cry from the “they want to take or guns away” crowd.

There is no room for cowards in Washington or in statehouses around the country. It is past time to stand up and say we won’t take it any more. The NRA and its radical allies are beyond truth. What matters is saving our children. Now. Now. NOW.