National Post (National Edition)

Grieving mother tells Trump: ‘Do something. This is not fair’

- The Daily Telegraph, with files from The Washington Post

A woman places flowers on Friday at one of 17 crosses for the victims of the school massacre. Nikolas Cruz faces 17 counts of premeditat­ed murder. 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 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!”

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