U.S. TEENS PLEAD FOR GUN CONTROL.
Students speak out on ‘broken’ state of America
• When he came face to face with a gunman in mid-rampage at his school 14-yearold Isaah Jean was terrified.
The youngster had heard the first gunshots ring out and was fleeing for the exit when he encountered Nikolas Cruz, 19, armed with an assault rifle, in a second floor hallway.
Isaah had last seen Cruz in a nearby Dollar Store, where Cruz worked as a cashier. He had known then there was something “wrong” about him.
“When I came down the stairs from the third floor to the hallway I saw him. He turned and looked at me I didn’t know what to do,” said Isaah. But before Cruz could open fire, the younger boy reacted first, hurling the only weapon he had — his cellphone — at the shooter.
“I saw it hit him somewhere around the face, and I saw him stumble backwards. Then I ran for the stairs.”
After escaping the building, and having heard no shots for a while, Isaah went back to the second floor, where he had thrown his phone.
He saw at least four bodies including that of Scott Beigel, his geography teacher. “I saw Mr. Beigel ... I just didn’t know how to feel,” said the distraught teenager, who was on crutches after fracturing his ankle during the melee.
The teenager was speaking hours before the arrival of President Donald Trump in Florida. Asked what he wanted to say to Trump, Isaah said: “I want to tell him we need to get rid of the guns. Just because people have a clean record doesn’t mean they should be able to just go and buy a gun.”
Marlene, his mother, added: “It’s time for (Trump) to do something. It’s time for gun control. Think about the grieving families. It could be the next community, and the next school.”
Days after the shooting, it is students from the school and their families who are issuing the loudest calls for gun control.
David Hogg, 17, a student journalist at the school, said, “I should not have had to witness what I saw, and my sister should not have two dead best friends. She’s 14. How do you unsee that? The politicians are supposed to be the adults, and the fact we have to stand up as students is a testament to the broken and decrepit state America is in.”
He added, “Blood is being spilled on the floors of American classrooms, and that is not acceptable.”
“How are we allowed to buy guns at the age of 18 or 19? That’s something we shouldn’t be able to do,” Lyliah Skinner, who survived the shooting, told CNN.
Guillermo Bogan, who is home-schooled but has friends at Douglas High, said the alleged shooter’s age shows the selfishness of the gun industry.
“Some people will just do anything for a dollar,” Bogan said at a midday vigil for the victims. “There should be a background check — are you mentally ill or are you not mentally ill? And clearly he was mentally ill.”
The pleas for action from Parkland struck a sharp contrast with the almost nonexistent debate on Capitol Hill over preventing gun violence. Calls to ban the semi-automatic weapon used by the shooter were considered a non-starter in a Republican Congress where lawmakers are heavily influenced by the National Rifle Association. Funding for new mental health services — one idea raised by some Republicans — would test conservative lawmakers’ commitment to cutting social spending.
On the Senate floor, Florida Republican Marco Rubio said he sympathized with people who wanted action but claimed that recent proposals restricting access to guns would not have prevented the tragedy.
“If someone decides that they are going to take it upon themselves to kill people ... it is a very difficult thing to stop,” he said. “When someone is planning and premeditating an attack, they will figure out a way to evade those laws or quite frankly to comply with them in order to get around it.”
Meanwhile, Lori Alhadeff, a mother whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was among the dead, screamed into a CNN camera as she tried to change the minds of politicians.
“President Trump, you say what can you do? You can do a lot! Do something,” she shouted. “This is not fair to our families and our children to go to school and have to get killed!”
MY SISTER SHOULD NOT HAVE TWO DEAD BEST FRIENDS. SHE’S 14. HOW DO YOU UNSEE THAT?