PUPILS who survived a mass shooting at their Florida school yesterday announced plans to march on Washington in a bid to “shame” politicians into reforming laws that make firearms readily available.

The “March for Our Lives” will take place on March 24, with sister rallies planned across the country, a group of students told ABC News’ This Week.

They pledged to make Wednesday’s slaughter in Parkland, Florida a turning point in the nation’s deadlocked debate on gun control.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, a troubled former pupil at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, confessed to killing 17 people with a legally purchased AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, the latest such atrocity in a country with more than 30,000 gun-related deaths annually.

Among those announcing the march was Emma Gonzalez, who captured worldwide attention with a powerful speech in which she assailed President Donald Trump over the multi-million-dollar support his campaign received from the gun lobby.

She vowed Stoneman Douglas would be “the last mass shooting”.

Yesterday, Gonzalez, 18, urged politicians to join a conversation about gun control – citing Trump as well as his fellow Republicans Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Rick Scott.

“We want to give them the opportunity to be on the right side of this,” she said, as she and her four classmates called on pupils nationwide to help push the message.

Trump will host a “listening session” with high school pupils and teachers on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement, though it did not specify who would attend the event.

Singling out the links between politicians and the powerful National Rifle Association, Stoneman Douglas student Cameron Kasky said any politician “who is taking money from the NRA is responsible for events like this”.

“This isn’t about the GOP,” he said, referring to the Republican Party. “This isn’t about the Democrats.”

The NRA, a traditional ally of the Republicans who currently control Congress and the White House, defends a literal view of the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment which promises a right “to keep and bear arms”.

Even after last October’s killing of 58 people by a gunman in Las Vegas who amassed 47 firearms to commit the worst mass shooting in recent US history, legislators accomplished nothing in the way of tighter controls. – AFP, February 19, 2018.