And though the eight of them were there to talk gun control, they weren't too keen on slogans. Nobody had a sheet bearing talking-points. They stayed polite, said "thank you."
There were five in-office meetings with legislators that day—four Democrats and one Republican. It was the latter—at the very end of the day—that most excited them. They were there, after all, to sway votes for the latest bill requiring universal background checks on gun sales. Not preach to the choir.
"Democrats aren't the most central people to meet with right now," said Adrian Ali-Caccamo, a junior at St. Paul's Central High School who'd helped organize the outing as part of a swell of youth activism since the latest school shooting. "I'm most excited about (state Sen. Bill) Ingebrigtsen. We get to meet the guy with the rifle over his desk. It's nice hearing from people saying 'thank you,' but ..."
It was one of the Democrats, in fact, who would deliver the most disheartening input: a bit of brutal honesty about gun-control efforts over the years.
And in the end, it was the Republican—who remained adamantly against them—that energized the students more than most.
And also told them "thank you."
The easy lap
The students' first meeting was almost too easy. State Sen. Ron Latz—the self-described "boogie-man" of the gun-control movement—was hardly a hard sell.
Did he support the background checks?
"It's my bill. I do," Latz smiled. While another DFL senator, Matt Little of Lakeville, had sponsored the bill, the language was Latz's.
Two of Latz's constituents—St. Louis Park seniors Ryan Lee and Eli Curran-Moore—were in the room. Soon enough, the senator and students were completing each others' sentences.
It proved to be a portent of how meetings with Democrats would go: agreement quickly transformed into strategy sessions. Who were the most important people to talk to?
The answer was almost always the same: suburban Republicans and rural Democrats. But mostly suburban Republicans.
"Once you get outside these exurbs, NRA rules out here," Rep. John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul, said in a later meeting, gesturing at a map on his door.
Time and again, Ben Jaeger—a senior at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School who's also the student rep for the city's school board—was the group's pitch man.
Jaeger starts his pitch with how the students had all met at YMCA Youth in Government, which put on a mock legislative session at the Capitol in January. Jaeger pushed out a pretty expansive gun-control bill: high-capacity clip ban, 10-day waiting period, universal background checks, the works.
The bill passed through the youth conference by an overwhelming margin. Because of that, "we feel we have a mandate from Minnesota's youth right now," Jaeger repeated.
The point didn't appear to get much traction with legislators. As even Latz told them, "I suspect the reason it passed overwhelmingly is they (students), number one, didn't have to worry about the political ramifications in their district. And they hadn't been lobbied yet by the NRA."
The grizzled vet