Parkland’s pain turns political after killings
Students lead protest demanding stricter gun-control laws and more are planned
Thousands of angry students, parents and residents have marched in Florida demanding stricter guncontrol laws as new details are revealed about the suspect accused of shooting and killed 17 people in a high school.
The rally, held in downtown Fort Lauderdale, was attended by scores of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where the carnage happened.
Teens spoke passionately during the rally in front of the federal courthouse, pleading with lawmakers to change the nation’s gun laws.
One student, Emma Gonzalez, angrily criticised politicians who take campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association. She challenged them to stop taking money, leading the crowd in a calland-response chant. “They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun,” she said, and the crowd chanted, “We call BS.”
She also said adults who knew that the shooter was mentally ill should have done more to prevent him from having a weapon.
The mass shooting has sparked calls for walkouts, sit-ins and other actions on school campuses across the US aimed at pushing lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws.
Organisers behind the Women’s March called for a 17-minute walkout on March 14 to “protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and [neighbourhoods].”
The Network for Public Education, an advocacy organisation for public schools, announced a “national day of action” on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine shooting.
From a mosaic of public records, interviews with friends and family and online interactions, it appears that Nikolas Cruz was unstable and violent to himself and those around him — and that when notified about his threatening behaviour, law enforcement did little to stop it.
Cruz left a trail of anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and homicidal messages on social media.
He reportedly left a suburban Palm Beach County mobile home in November because his benefactor gave him an ultimatum: you or the gun. Three teens told Buzzfeed that Cruz became jealous and angry when his ex-girlfriend broke up with him and began seeing someone else.
The FBI said it received a tip last month that Cruz had a “desire to kill” and access to guns and could be plotting an attack, but agents failed to investigate. FBI Director Christopher Wray has faced calls to resign. A person close to Cruz called the FBI’s tip line on January 5 and provided information about Cruz’s weapons and his erratic behaviour, including his disturbing social media posts. The caller was concerned that Cruz could attack a school.
The agency acknowledged that the tip should have been shared with the FBI’s Miami office and investigated, but it was not. The agency was already facing criticism for its treatment of a tip about a YouTube comment posted last year. The comment posted by a “Nikolas Cruz” said, “Im going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI investigated the remark but did not determine who made it.
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said the shooting was a “tragic consequence” of the FBI’s missteps and ordered a review of the Justice Depart- ment’s processes.
It also emerged that in 2016 Cruz cut his arms on Snapchat, the social media service, and said he wanted to buy a gun. That led to a social services investigation which concluded he was “low risk”.
In his first comment on gun control in relation to the shooting, US President Donald Trump tweeted: “Why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!” A Democrat gun-control measure after the 2012 Newtown massacre failed, despite 50 Democrats supporting it, when it could not get the required 60 votes to break a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. Trump signed a bill revoking Obama-backed restrictions on people considered unfit to handle their finances from buying a gun.
Trump visited survivors and medical staff at a local hospital. Trump spoke to a female pupil who had been shot four times.
In a tweet, he said that he and the first lady “met such incredible people last night in Broward County, Florida. Will never forget them, or the evening!” — AP, AAP, Telegraph