Florida carnage survivors push lawmakers for assault gun ban
‘We want to see some common sense gun laws so this will never happen again’
Dozens of teenage survivors of the second deadliest public school shooting in US history marched on Florida’s capital yesterday to ask lawmakers to ban sales of assault rifles of the sort used to kill 17 students and educators last week.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, became the latest school targeted by a gunman using a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, heating up the nation’s long-running debate about gun rights and public safety.
Dressed in jeans and Tshirts and carrying signs with the slogan “#Neveragain,” survivors of the February 14 mass shooting met with lawmakers in Tallahassee, to ask for stricter controls on gun sales.
Investigators said the assault was carried out by 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, who purchased an AR-15 nearly a year ago. Police have charged Cruz, who had been kicked out of Douglas for disciplinary problems, with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
“We want to see some common sense gun laws so this will never happen again,” said Rachel Padnis, a 16-year-old sophomore from the school near Fort Lauder-dale.
She and classmates said they were dismayed but undeterred by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature’s Tuesday rebuff of a bid to bring up a bill to block sales of assault rifles.
Under pressure after Parkland, Trump yesterday directed the Justice Department to quickly complete a proposed rule that would treat “bump stocks” as machine guns, which could effectively outlaw them in the US.
Meanwhile, officials said yesterday that they thwarted a student’s plot to open fire at a Southern California high school after a staff member overheard the threat by the boy upset over a ban on headphones.