Trump holds listening session with students on mass shootings - World News Tonight

Parents and students — including those impacted by the deadly mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla. high school — offered emotional stories of their experiences during a “listening session” with President Donald Trump Wednesday.

There were narratives that painted a painful portrait of some of the youngest victims of mass gun violence in America.

Their stories of the aftermath of those deaths, and of friends and teachers lost, provided the climax to a day focused on student action on gun policy reform. Students gathered in Washington D.C., held signs and spoke about the need for more gun safety laws as they marched down the National Mall toward the White House.

There was the story of Samuel Zeif, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor, who, through tears, told of frantically texting his loved ones and then realizing his brother was in a classroom on the floor above him, where the shooting was happening.

He learned that a good friend died in the attack. The next day, Zeif turned 18.

Zeif sat next to Nicole Hockley, the mother of Dylan, a six-year-old killed during a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 and near Darrell Scott, whose daughter, Rachel, was killed in yet another mass shooting years earlier in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado.

For those in the room whose emotion was still fresh and raw, people like Scott and Hockley, co-director of the group Sandy Hook Promise, offered the perspective of distance and policy prescriptions gleaned from years spent advocating on behalf of slain loved ones.

"This is not difficult. These deaths are preventable. And I implore you, consider your own children," Hockley said. "You don't want to be me. No parent does. And you have the ability to make a difference and save lives today. Please don't waste this."

“We are going to do something about this horrible situation that’s going on," Trump said. "We will figure it out together.”

That something, he vowed, would include strengthening background checks.

The president's proposed 2019 budget could potentially roll back federal grants aimed at helping states report to the national background check system. - More

Trump holds listening session with students on mass shootings - 

World News Tonight