Our View: What a shame it takes the children's fear to lead change

High school students today are afraid, afraid that going to school could be fatal.

The last time a large group of students were that fearful was about 50 years ago, during the Vietnam War. Men graduating from high school and attending college were subject to the draft. They had been for many years. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a good chance that if your draft number was called, you could end up in Vietnam.

And once there, they had a good chance of being killed in an unwinnable and unnecessary war.

Most young men who were against the war - when you really got down to it - were afraid of being killed.

Then, on May 4, 1970, four unarmed students protesting the Cambodia campaign President Richard Nixon had announced four days earlier were killed at Kent State University by Ohio National Guard members. Nine others were wounded, not all of them protesters. Protests erupted nationally. The war didn't end immediately, not by any means, but a generation of Baby Boomers was activated to participate in politics, and by 1973, rid themselves of the draft, if not wars. Today, our wars are fought by "volunteers."

Now, what's known as Generation Z appears to have found its voice after the massacre of 17 people on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Unlike the Boomers in control of state and federal governments - who fall back on the hackneyed response of "thoughts and prayers" after each successive mass shooting at an elementary or high school - the survivors of those attacks want to do more.

And every student who attends a school that has yet to experience a mass shooting feels like a survivor, as well.

For several years, students have told each other that one or another of their classmates "could totally come in and shoot up the school."

Up to now, their response has mainly been to stay on the potential shooter's good side.

But, while civility toward classmates is always a good thing, neither that nor home schooling is really an answer to the fear of carnage.

Fear is a tremendous motivating factor in politics. Our children are feeling it.

Change is in the air.