After shooting, students make emotional return
MIAMI — Students and teachers returned on Sunday to a Florida school for the first time since 17 people were shot dead there, consoling each other even as they called for swift action to address gun violence.
“Imagine (being) in a plane crash and then having to get on the same plane every day and fly somewhere else — it’s never going to be the same,” David Hogg, a survivor of the Feb 14 shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school, told ABC television’s This Week.
The school held a voluntary “orientation” on Sunday, with teachers and staff due back starting on Monday and classes resuming on Wednesday — a prospect described as “daunting” and “scary”, but which is also a step for survivors to move forward after the attack.
One teacher who had already been back told NPR radio that the shock of returning to a classroom left exactly as it had been during the carnage — notebooks still on desks, the calendar still set to Feb 14 — made her so physically ill she had to leave.
But Cameron Kasky, a student who survived the slaughter, tweeted a picture of people on campus, saying: “It is GOOD TO BE HOME.”
“I have all my friends here with me and it just makes me feel like I’m not alone in this situation,” student Michelle Dittmeier, who attended the orientation, told ABC.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School also received support from alumni, with previous graduating classes making banners to decorate the school, WSVN TV news reported.
In nearby Fort Lauderdale on Sunday night, people gathered for a vigil that left 17 chairs empty in memory of the victims, WSVN reported, after protesters gathered outside the Kalashnikov USA gun manufacturer in neighboring Pompano Beach.
“Gun reform now!” said one of the protesters’ signs, while another called for the “death factory” to be shut.
A new CNN poll, conducted a week after the Florida shooting, shows surging public support for stricter gun laws — surpassing levels seen even after other horrific shootings in recent years — and for a ban on powerful semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 used in Parkland.
Overall, 70 percent of those surveyed said they supported stricter gun laws, up from 52 percent in October, and 57 percent favored a ban on semi-automatic arms, an increase from 49 percent.
The United States has more than 30,000 deaths annually.
But the National Rifle Association pushed back on Sunday against modest proposals by President Donald Trump and other Republicans to change US gun laws after the latest school shooting.
The powerful gun lobby group does not support Trump’s proposals to raise the age limit for buying certain types of guns and to ban bump stocks that enable semi-automatic rifles to shoot hundreds of rounds a minute, a spokeswoman said on This Week. gun-related