Shooting survivors march for gun ban
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tallahassee/parkland — Student activists from the Florida high school where 17 teens and staff were shot and killed began a march to the state capital of Tallahassee on Wednesday, where they were to meet with lawmakers to call for a ban on assault-style weapons.
The latest in a series of deadly shootings in schools in the United States has inflamed the long-running national debate about gun rights. The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have emerged as the new faces of the gun-control movement.
“We’re here to ask for change and we’re confident change will happen,” said Noah Kaufman, 16. “We know the issues, and we know who is with us and who isn’t.”
Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former student expelled from Douglas for disciplinary problems, is charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the second deadliest shooting at a US public school. He was armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 assault-style rifle he legally purchased from a licensed gun dealer last year when he was 18, authorities said. Carrying signs bearing the #NeverAgain slogan, about 100 students from Douglas walked to Florida’s capital, where the Republican-controlled legislature on Tuesday rebuffed a bid to bring up a bill to block sales of assault-style rifles. But signaling a possible shift, state Senator Bill Galvan, slated to be the chamber’s next president, called for a bill to raise the legal age for purchasing assault rifles from 18 to 21, the same as it is for handguns. The legislature’s current session ends on March 9, leaving little time for a vote.
US President Donald Trump, a strong supporter of gun rights, was scheduled to host a “listening session” with high school students and teachers at the White House on Wednesday. Calls for national student walk-outs and marches in the coming months gained steam on social media, including the “March for Our Lives” on March 24 in Washington, spearheaded by some Douglas students. —