Leaders of the “March for Our Lives” anti-gun protest movement scrambled Tuesday to distance themselves from an op-ed in the New York Times by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens calling for the Second Amendment to be repealed.

In the op-ed, Stevens wrote that in the wake of last weekend’s nationwide protests, ” the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”

March for Our Lives leader Cameron Kasky was the first to try to contain the damage. Kasky, a student at Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School who used his platform at a CNN town hall last month to compare Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to the shooter, and who also accused National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch of being a bad mother, immediately shared the article on Twitter, though he added that it was “not what we are going for”:

Kasky added that he supported “responsible ownership of a small weapon”:

Later, however, Kasky tweeted that the Second Amendment was outdated:

On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that the Second Amendment would never be repealed:

That send the March for Our Lives organizers into overdrive.

Kasky launched a tweetstorm of denials, including insults directed at the president:

Fellow activist leader Emma Gonzáles retweeted:

And fellow March for Our Lives founder David Hogg retweeted:

The student leaders of the March for Our Lives have reason to be worried: only one fifth of Americans, and just 39 percent of Democrats, support repealing the Second Amendment.

The student leaders were the public face of the protests over the weekend, and were widely credited by the media as having “organized” them. However, a new study revealed that only 10% of the protesters at the main demonstration in Washington, DC, were under 18 years old. The average age of protesters there was 49.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.