Trump slated after massacre
SCHOOL KILLINGS: ANGRY RALLIES DEMAND URGENT GUN CONTROL TO STOP SUCH TRAGEDIES
We are going to be the last, says angry young woman in crowd address.
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the FBI was so caught up in the Russia probe that it has failed to heed signs which could have prevented the Parkland school shooting.
His comments came as he faced criticism from survivors of the attack over his ties to the powerful National Rifle Association, and after several thousand rallied in Florida to demand urgent gun control.
“Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”
US authorities have come under mounting scrutiny for failing to act on a series of warning signs ahead of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which 17 people were killed.
The FBI admitted on Friday it had received a chilling warning in January from a tipster who said the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, could be planning a mass shooting, but agents failed to follow up.
The attack, the eighth school shooting this year alone, has also renewed calls for greater gun control, with several survivors leading the charge.
One of them, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez, delivered a fiery address to a crowd of pupils, parents and residents in Fort Lauderdale.
“To every politician taking donations from the NRA, shame on you!” she thundered, assailing Trump over the multi-million-dollar support his campaign received from the gun lobby.
“We are going to be the last mass shooting... We are going to change the law,” she vowed – slamming the fact that 19-yearold Cruz could buy a semi-automatic firearm despite a history of troubling and violent behaviour.
Trump himself suggested the root cause of mass shootings was a crisis of mental health.
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me [...] how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association,” Gonzalez said in her address that went viral on the internet.
“It doesn’t matter because I already know. Thirty million,” she said. –