For survivors of the Parkland shooting, it’s a tense time. They feel lucky to be alive, for one thing. For another, they’re still in shock over the loss of their classmates.

More than that, though, is the fact that they felt so powerless during the assault. All they could do was run. Now that it’s over, they’re angry over that sense of powerlessness and are lashing out. They want to feel powerful again, to try and feel like they’re working to make sure they never feel that powerless again.

As survivors of Wednesday’s school shooting demand that it be the last such massacre, marches are being planned around the country to amplify the students’ message that action must be taken to end gun violence.

The marches share one mission: to put pressure on Congress to pass gun reform and make schools safer.

Fourteen students and three teachers were killed and many injured when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last week.

The shooting was at least the eighth at a US middle or high school this year and has reignited a debate over gun control.

In an emotional rally Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, politicians and Marjory Stoneman Douglas students called for a ban on weapons like the one used at the high school, and urged voters to kick out lawmakers who oppose the move or who take money from the National Rifle Association.

Here’s what their efforts will ultimately do: Nothing.

The anti-gun base will feel energized. They’ll point to this as a major moment in their quest to destroy the Second Amendment. They’ll pretend that these kids–children, mostly, whose opinions on any other topic would be ignored unless it perfectly meshed with these nimrods’ ideas–are the perfect ambassadors for the anti-gun message.

Meanwhile, we who support gun rights will hunker down and combat the rhetoric with things like facts, such as the fact that the Second Amendment was founded to protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, or the fact that the so-called “assault rifle” is nothing more than a semi-automatic weapon mechanically no different than many hunting rifles.

Emotions are high right now, surely, but we also know that the American public will lose interest in this soon enough. Remember Las Vegas? The media was all abuzz over bump stocks for a little while, then they found a new shiny object.

These kids don’t realize it, but that’s all they are. They’re the new shiny object for the media to adore…until the next one pops up.

They’ll have their marches. They’ll stage school walkouts. They’ll do whatever they feel they must to push the anti-gun agenda, never understanding just how much of a factor anti-gun hysteria played in that massacre.

At the end of the day, though, nothing will change, and that’s a good thing. Laws should never be the result of heightened emotions. That’s how you get laws banning things like lawn darts.

Instead, laws should be considered when passions are low and we can have a semi-reasonable debate on the topic – which is exactly what the gun grabbers don’t want to happen.