Carmen Schentrup, 16, Student at Stoneman Douglas High School: February 21, 2002 – February 14, 2018

Carmen Schentrup was, among many things, whip smart. 16 years old and she was ready to start at the University of Florida or the University of Washington next Fall. She was a National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist of 2018, which–-I can tell you as a student in the trenches of standardized test prep-–is pretty remarkable. She even taught herself German–-successfully, I might add. Her family says she read voraciously–-Shakespeare especially. “We always used to tell her she was going to get into Harvard or something,” said Angelyse Perez, a Stoneman Douglas senior, who was good friends with Carmen earlier in high school. Carmen dreamt of becoming a medical scientist too, of finding the cure for ALS.

Other online obituaries mention her National Merit Scholarship most prominently. Carmen will never know that she was a Semi-Finalist. Notification arrived the day after she was killed.

“Enough is enough,” said the priest at her funeral–-which was held on Tuesday the 20th, the day before her seventeenth birthday.

“Today we mourn. . . . After that, we are going to act.”

Prayer alone isn’t going to make gun control a reality in this country. Ms. Van Wagenen of college counseling has kindly provided us with postage. Write to our senators. Write to all of them. You don’t have to know the political jargon; even writing Schentrup’s name on the postcard is enough. We just need numbers.

Here are the names and addresses of the politicians paid most highly by the NRA: 

Senator John McCain (Arizona)–218 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington DC, 20510
Senator Richard Burr (North Carolina)–217 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
Senator Roy Blunt (Missouri)–260 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
Senator Thom Tillis (North Carolina)–185 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
Senator Cord Gardner (Colorado)–354 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510