Parkland shooting galvanized teen gun control activists across the country

I’ll never forget the day when 17 of my classmates and teachers were gunned down in one of the deadliest school shootings in our nation’s history. I’ll also never forget the collective anxiety, fear, and grief everyone at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School felt in the months following the tragedy.

I remember struggling with not sleeping or eating. I remember quitting varsity track and field after six years, giving up my position of captain. I remember struggling with an assigned essay for one class, as the constant thought of my lost friends weighed on my ability to focus. When I confided in my teacher that I was unable to write, she told me to put my grief in a box and complete the paper.

Two Parkland school shooting survivors have died by suicide over the last week — a tragic reminder of the lingering pain and trauma brought by gun violence.

Sydney Aiello, a 19-year-old recent graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, took her life last weekend. On Sunday, police confirmed that a second survivor, a current student, is also now dead in an apparent suicide.

A year after a gunman in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the urgency for gun control among the American public is waning.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 51 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws in the United States. While that’s still a slim majority, it’s a significant drop from when the same poll was conducted last year, soon after the Parkland shooting, when 71 percent of Americans said gun laws should be tightened.

A year ago today, on February 14, 2018, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people, and wounded 17 others. The shooting inspired a wave of activism, leading to the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, and new activism for gun control around the 2018 midterm elections.

But since the Parkland shooting, Congress has taken no significant steps to address gun violence. And since Parkland, there have been nearly 350 mass shootings — nearly one every day — based on the Gun Violence Archive’s definition, which counts every event in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot but not necessarily killed at the same general time and location.

RENO, Nevada — Laser Shot. Door Shield. PepperBall. Vendors hawked their safety products to school cops at a casino resort in Nevada this month during the National School Safety Conference. The exhibit hall was packed, with dozens of businesses selling high-tech answers — and some low-tech options — to the question on many people’s minds: How do we prepare for a mass shooting at our school?

One seller insisted that the answer is a bullet-resistant blanket nailed to classroom doors. Another vendor said schools should arm teachers with flashlights that shoot pellets of pepper spray. A chatty ex-cop said his bullet-resistant backpacks will shield children from the bullets of an AR-15.

RENO, Nevada — Marilyn Lewis had never held a gun. But on one dry desert afternoon in June, the Alabama education official aimed a 9 mm pistol at an armed teenager in a high school classroom during a shooting rampage. Students screamed. Lewis pulled the trigger. After the third round, the gunman fell to the ground.

Everyone applauded. “He’s wounded in the chest, he’s down,” said one of the Laser Shot sales reps as he looked at the results on a computer tablet.

On Thursday, a shooter killed five people in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, in just the latest example of a mass shooting in America. But unlike so many of the other shootings that have gained national attention, the gunman in this case did not use an AR-15 or what’s typically considered an assault weapon. Instead, he used a shotgun.

But here’s the thing: When it comes to shootings in America, the use of an assault rifle is actually rare. Shootings with rifles, including assault rifles, make up less than 3 percent of gun homicides in the US. And according to federal data, handguns have over the past couple decades made up the great majority — more than 70 percent — of firearms used in homicides.

The American Medical Association (AMA), the US’s largest physician group, officially endorsed a variety of gun control measures on Tuesday.

According to Lindsey Tanner at the Associated Press, the AMA, which represents nearly a quarter of the US’s physicians, backed several new gun laws at its annual policy meeting. Here are some examples, from the AP:

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has set up a commission to study school safety in the aftermath of mass shootings like the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, in February. But on Tuesday, DeVos revealed that the commission will not study a key problem: guns.

“That is not part of the commission’s charge, per se,” DeVos told members of Congress.

A video game that let players simulate a school shooting was set to come out on Steam, the PC’s biggest platform for buying and selling games. But Valve Corporation, which runs Steam, has taken it down.

Active Shooter, from developer Revived Games and publisher ACID, was set to release next week on Steam. But it drew a lot of negative attention, including from outlets like BuzzFeed and Kotaku, as well as the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. Parkland activist Emma Gonzalez tweeted, “Valve Corp shut down this shovelware immediately please.” (Shovelware is software that does nothing new and is a quick cash grab.) Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) called the game “inexcusable.”

President Donald Trump will soon speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Dallas.

The NRA meeting is a big event for gun owners and supporters of gun rights every year, but it’s getting increased attention this year because it’s the NRA’s first meeting since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, which killed 17 people, sparking a new push for gun control that culminated in the massive March for Our Lives.

It was said in 1989 after a gunman killed five children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California. It was said in 1999 after two teenagers killed 13 of their peers at the high school in Columbine, Colorado. It was said in 2012 after a shooter killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. It was said in 2016 after a man killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and in 2017 after a man killed 58 at a country concert in Las Vegas.

“Never again.”

Pro-gun rights high school students are walking out of schools in 42 states Wednesdsay for 16 minutes in support of Second Amendment rights.

The walkout, “Stand for the Second,” is a response to the March 14 National School Walkout that called for gun control policy measures while honoring the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

On April 20, 1999, two high school students opened fire at Columbine High School in Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20. That day became a grim marker in a line of mass murders that would later include Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and dozens of other, lesser-known shootings.

Friday, April 20, 2018, on the 19th anniversary of Columbine, students will walk out of classrooms to protest for gun reform. The National School Walkout is calling attention to the broken promise of “never again” — that after Columbine, the mass shootings continued.

A majority of American teenagers are now worried about being the victim of a school shooting — something that is no longer an uncommon occurrence in the United States.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows that 57 percent of US teenagers are worried that a shooting could take place at their own school — and one in four are “very worried” about the chance. Hispanic and black kids are the most concerned. Three-quarters of Latino teens said they were worried, and 60 percent of black teens surveyed were worried about the possibility.

David Hogg might be the most vilified person in right-wing media right now.

After surviving the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Hogg and his classmates became vocal activists in the fight for gun control, using their media spotlight to advocate for tougher gun laws.

Before the shooting in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, and before the March for Our Lives and Friday’s planned National School Walkout, Kyle Kashuv, a 16-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, spent a lot of his time taking Advanced Placement classes and playing video games in his spare time (his favorite is Fortnite). But since February 14, Kashuv has been too busy for video games. He’s visited Washington, met President Trump and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and made multiple appearances on Fox News.

In the weeks after the shooting, Kashuv has emerged within conservative media as a “professional and respectful” alternative to Parkland students like David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, who’ve become something of celebrity faces in the anti-gun movement.

A chemistry teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of a shooting in February that left 17 dead, was arrested this week after he accidentally left a loaded gun in a public bathroom. A drunk, homeless man eventually found the gun and fired it; the bullet hit a wall.

Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the bizarre shooting scene Sunday at the Deerfield Beach Pier near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, according to the Miami Herald.

A commentator with the Sinclair Broadcasting Group has resigned after sending a tweet about a Parkland teen survivor in March, in which he threatened “to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass.”

Jamie Allman, a St. Louis–based conservative TV and radio host, tweeted, “When we kick their ass they all like to claim we’re drunk. I’ve been hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass tomorrow. Busy working. Preparing.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the context of the tweet was unclear.

March for Our Lives organizers will now try to confront politicians face to face. They’re calling it “Town Hall for Our Lives” and are pushing every single member of the House of Representatives to host a town hall on Saturday, April 7.

March organizers are partnering with the Town Hall Project, which helped rally progressives during the congressional fight over health care, to help activists organize.

Ted Nugent, a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member and rock musician, became the latest to lob personal attacks at the teenage Parkland, Florida, shooting survivors who organized the March for Our Lives — saying that the kids are “liars,” “poor, mushy-brained children,” and even “soulless” during an interview on March 30 with The Joe Pags Show, a nationally syndicated conservative radio show.

“All you have to do now is not only feel sorry for the liars, but you have to go against them and pray to God that the lies can be crushed and the liars can be silenced so that real measures can be put into place to actually save children’s lives,” Nugent said.

The perpetrator in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, is already a household name, although I will not name him here.

He was arrested a couple of miles from the school after he killed, in a matter of minutes, 17 people and wounded 15 others.

The March for Our Lives was launched by a bunch of bold teenagers — particularly survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg. But a survey of participants in the Washington, DC, protest suggests that these teens have attracted a much broader kind of crowd.

Dana R. Fisher, a University of Maryland professor who studies protest movements, found that the majority of participants at the march in Washington were 26 years old or older. Of the 308 people sampled, 40 were 19 or younger (13 percent) and 52 were 25 or younger (17 percent).

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is taunting one of the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting for getting rejected from colleges he applied to. And now the student is calling on her sponsors to boycott her show — to some big success.

The controversy began with a tweet on Wednesday, when Ingraham linked to an article from the Daily Wire about how David Hogg, an organizer for March for Our Lives, didn’t get into UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, or UC Irvine despite his 4.2 GPA. (Ingraham mistakenly said he had a 4.1 GPA.)

Black survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, say that the gun control debate that has been raging since the tragedy has largely overlooked them — and argue that recent moves to increase school safety by increasing security would actually put them more at risk.

At a press conference Wednesday, black students said that they were being ignored in coverage of Parkland, noting that media coverage hasn’t reflected the fact that their school is 11 percent black.