Tag Archives: Parkland shooting

Florida’s gun debate persists a year after Parkland mass shooting

FILE PHOTO: A police officer Jamie Rubenstein stands guard in front of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after the police security perimeter was removed, following a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 18, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A year after Florida lawmakers rushed through far-reaching legislation on school safety and gun control in response to the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, the state is on the verge of reopening the heart-wrenching debate.

Gun control advocates vow to block a recommendation to arm teachers, while conservatives aim to rescind the new gun restrictions. The opposing viewpoints are likely to create some tension when the Florida legislative session begins next month.

“A lot of those nerves are still raw, and there are still a lot of debates about all of these things,” said Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who is working on a book about the shooting with a victim’s father.

Massive student protests across the country reshaped the U.S. debate on firearms after a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle in a five-and-a-half-minute shooting spree at the school on Feb. 14, 2018.

Twenty states passed some form of gun regulation last year, including nine states with a Republican governor, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Florida, one of the most gun-friendly states in the country, quickly imposed a three-day waiting period for gun purchases and raised the age limit for buying rifles from 18 to 21.

The law also required schools to place at least one armed staff member or law enforcement officer at each campus and retrofit classrooms with “hard corners,” which give students a place to seek cover from gunfire.

Since then, the sheriff of Broward County was dismissed, a special commission issued a 458-page report to examine what happened as well as make recommendations and schools across Florida have had nearly a year to implement the law’s requirements.

Even so, some schools have yet to fully comply with law.

“Broward County schools are not safer today than they were last year,” said state Senator Lauren Book, a Democrat who sat on the special commission and whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

DEBATE OVER ARMING TEACHERS

Book has been critical of schools for not complying with the requirement of posting one armed defender on each campus, for failing to enact emergency “code red” procedures and the underreporting crime committed by students.

She does not, however, support the commission’s recommendation to allow classroom teachers who pass a 148-hour course to carry concealed firearms. Last year’s law permits some school personnel to carry weapons, but not in the classroom.

Arming teachers would require new legislation, and a leading gun-control advocacy group has made stopping that proposal a top priority.

“We don’t want guns in our classrooms,” said Gay Valimont, volunteer leader of the Florida chapter of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America, which is funded by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was among those killed in Parkland, supports arming the teachers.

“Whoever’s against it, they didn’t have a daughter begging for life on the third floor, hoping that someone was there to save her,” said Pollack, a Republican member of the state school board who is co-authoring the book with Eden.

Emboldened by sweeping electoral victories in 2018, Democratic lawmakers are pushing for even more gun control laws in statehouses nationwide this year.

Families of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas victims are also pushing for a 2020 ballot initiative to ban semiautomatic rifles similar to the one used in the 2018 attack.

Marion Hammer, the National Rifle Association’s lobbyist for Florida, said the gun rights group has not taken a position on legislation proposed in the state this year.

But she chastised Second Amendment supporters in the statehouse who “turned their backs on gun owners,” and voted for last year’s measure.

State Representative Mike Hill, a Republican, is sponsoring a bill to repeal the 2018 law’s firearms provisions, saying they were not properly vetted.

“Emotions were running high,” Hill said. “Instead of relying on looking at the facts, (lawmakers) instead let emotional mob rule control the day, and they voted for that measure.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Colleen Jenkins and G Crosse)

Americans support gun control but doubt lawmakers will act: Reuters

FILE PHOTO: A prospective buyer examines an AR-15 at the "Ready Gunner" gun store In Provo, Utah, U.S. in Provo, Utah, U.S., June 21, 2016. REUTERS/George Frey/File Photo

By Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Most Americans want tougher gun laws but have little confidence their lawmakers will take action, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the country’s deadliest high school shooting.

The poll of more than 6,800 adults reflects widespread frustration with state and federal lawmakers after decades of mass shootings in the United States. The Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students and staff.

According to the poll, 69 percent of Americans, including 85 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans, want strong or moderate restrictions placed on firearms. To stop gun violence, 55 percent said they wanted policies that make it tougher to own guns, while 10 percent said making firearm ownership easier would be better.

The poll shows public support for strong firearms restrictions dipped slightly from a year ago, when the media was closely following the Parkland shooting, but overall support for gun restrictions has risen since the poll started asking about gun control in 2012.

Among those who want tougher gun laws now, only 14 percent said they were ‘very confident’ their representatives understood their views on firearms, and just 8 percent felt ‘very confident’ their elected representatives would do anything about it.

Taletha Whitley, 41, of Clayton, North Carolina, said lawmakers were too dependent on campaign contributions from gun rights groups to care about public opinion.

“It would take money out of their pockets to write gun control laws,” said Whitley, a Democrat who works in customer service for a local grocery chain. “That’s why they haven’t done anything about all of these mass shootings. It’s about the dollars.”

The findings underscore the challenges for gun safety advocates who, even after a banner legislative and electoral year in 2018, continue to push against the perception that the gun lobby commands the debate.

Gun control laws have been passed in 20 states since the Parkland shooting, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Gun control advocates also outspent the National Rifle Association during last year’s congressional elections, and 150 of the 196 candidates Everytown endorsed won their races for state and federal offices.

Shannon Watts, who founded Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America after the 2012 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, said it has taken years to build a community of activists capable of taking on the NRA. After an effort to overhaul gun laws failed in 2013, Watts continued to recruit volunteers and aligned her organization with Everytown to build a network that now has a chapter in every state.

“You cannot underestimate the significance of hundreds of thousands of volunteers telling their lawmaker you have to do the right thing,” Watts said. “We tell them that when you do we’ll have your back, and when you don’t we’ll have your job.”

Watts and others are taking advantage of a drop in activity among gun rights advocates, who have been operating with less urgency now that they have an ally in the White House.

The NRA concedes that fundraising has fallen since Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November 2016 but said gun control groups were overplaying their hand with some of their agenda.

“There’s less to do because we’ve been so successful over the years,” NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said. “We continue to defeat gun control legislation across the country while passing gun rights legislation.”

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL

The poll found rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans largely agree on a variety of gun-control measures, including a ban on internet sales of ammunition, stopping people with a history of mental illness from buying guns, placing armed guards at schools and expanding background checks at gun shows.

Among parents with school-age children, 65 percent said they were somewhat or very worried about gun violence in schools, and a majority of those parents were supportive of efforts intended to beef up school security.

Sixty-one percent of parents said they favored publicly funding firearms training for teachers and school personnel, and 54 percent said they approved of allowing school personnel to carry guns.

Irfan Rydhan, 44, of San Jose, California, favors strong firearms restrictions but said he did not seriously think about gun control until earlier this year when he enrolled his 6-year-old in kindergarten.

“Obviously there’s a lot of anxiety that comes with dropping your kid off at public school, and there’s no one really watching him all the time,” said Rydhan, a poll respondent. “It makes you want to be more proactive about his safety.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English between Jan. 11 and Jan. 28 throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 6,813 adults, including 2,701 who identified as Democrats and 2,359 who identified as Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Tom Brown)

Report into deadliest U.S. high school shooting calls for arming teachers, more security

Pictures of Joaquin Oliver and Aaron Feis, victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, are seen on a cross placed in a park to commemorate the victims, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 19, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Arm teachers, spend more on school security and mental health and train police to be more aggressive when responding to school shootings — those are some of the recommendations in a report into the deadliest U.S. high school shooting released Wednesday.

The 485-page report into the Parkland, Florida school massacre, that left 14 students and three adults dead at the hands of a lone gunman in February 2018, will be studied by Florida Governor Rick Scott, Governor-elect Ron DeSantis and a state commission charged with finding ways to prevent another school shooting massacre.

The report, by the state-appointed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, finds a cascade of errors from law enforcement officers holding back as shots were fired and lax school security that allowed a former student with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle access to the campus.

FILE PHOTO: An empty chair is seen in front of flowers and mementoes placed on a fence to commemorate the victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

FILE PHOTO: An empty chair is seen in front of flowers and mementoes placed on a fence to commemorate the victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

The Parkland shooting has sparked a national debate about school security, gun-rights, and fueled a student-led movement calling for more gun-control, called Never Again MSD, after the school’s initials.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the school safety commission, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that there needs to be a sense of urgency in implementing change in school security.

“When you send your kids to school in the morning, there’s an expectation they’re going to come home alive in the afternoon,” Gualtieri told the newspaper.

He also said he strongly supported the idea of arming some gun-trained teachers.

But not everyone on the 16-member commission agreed with all of its findings.

Commission member Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was killed at Stoneman Douglas, told the Sun Sentinel that she opposes the idea of arming teachers.

“Teachers want to teach,” she told the newspaper. “That’s their expertise. Law enforcement, their expertise is supposed to be to engage the threat.”

The report was critical of a perceived slow response from law enforcement officers who waited outside the school buildings while shots were still being fired.

Other recommendations included more funding for mental health services for students, creating safe areas at schools where students can hide from a potential gunman, locking school perimeter gates while school is in session and requiring law enforcement officers to immediately seek out a shooter instead of hanging back.

The report acknowledges that more money is needed to implement the recommendations.

(Reporting by Rich McKay; Editing by Michael Perry)

Parkland killer boasted of mass murder plans in cell phone videos

FILE PHOTO: Nikolas Cruz sits next to his attorneys appointed by the Broward Public Defender’s Office as a judge determines if he can afford his own lawyer, in Broward Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., April 11, 2018. Taimy Alvarez/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – The teen charged with shooting 17 people dead at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, boasted of plans to commit mass murder in a series of cell phone videos recorded by him before the rampage and released on Wednesday by prosecutors.

In one of the three video clips, Nikolas Cruz, 19, calmly declares, “Hello. My name is Nik and I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018.” He goes on to say: “My goal is to kill at least 20 people with an AR-15,” referring to the assault-style rifle he is seen holding in the footage.

Brandishing the rifle at another point, Cruz says: “You’re all going to die,” adding with a chuckle, “Can’t wait.”

The video clips were part of an inventory of prosecution evidence recently shared with the defense team during the pre-trial discovery process, said Constance Jones-Simmons, a spokeswoman for the Broward County state attorney’s office.

The Miami Herald and other media outlets obtained copies through a public records request after seeing mention of the footage in court documents, she told Reuters.

The three videos, none longer than 90 seconds in duration, are believed to have been made a short time before the shooting rampage on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but Jones-Simmons said she did not know precisely when they were recorded.

Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas student expelled for disciplinary problems, has been described by former classmates as a social misfit and trouble-maker who was fascinated with guns. Police have said they responded to numerous calls related to the teenager in the years leading up to the massacre.

But authorities, who say Cruz confessed to the killings after his arrest, have never offered a possible motive for the bloodshed. Release of the video “selfies,” posted online by the Herald, shed little new light on that question except to suggest Cruz felt he was treated as an outcast.

In one video, Cruz said his former classmates thought he was “an idiot and a dumb ass.” He also professed his love for a girl he mentioned only by first name, and said he hoped to see her in the “afterlife.”

The gun seen in the video is apparently the rifle authorities say Cruz legally purchased from a licensed gun dealer last year and ultimately used as the murder weapon.

He is charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder stemming from the Parkland killings, which rank as the second-greatest loss of life from gun violence at a public school in modern U.S. history, after a 2012 shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 first-graders and six adult educators dead.

The Florida shooting triggered an extraordinary protest movement and lobbying campaign for tougher gun control restrictions led by student survivors of the Parkland massacre and parents of the victims.

Cruz, whose own lawyer had called him a “broken human being” who feels remorse for his crimes, is being held in the Broward County jail without bond in Fort Lauderdale, and is on suicide watch, officials said.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Michael Perry)

U.S. gunmaker Remington files for bankruptcy

FILE PHOTO: A man walks with his Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun during a pro-gun and Second Amendment protest outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., January 19, 2013. REUTERS/Joshua Lott/File Photo

By Tom Hals and Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) – Remington Outdoor Co Inc, one of the largest U.S. makers of firearms, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday to carry out a debt-cutting deal with creditors amid mounting public pressure for greater gun control.

The company’s chief financial officer, Stephen Jackson, said in court papers that Remington’s sales fell significantly in the year before its bankruptcy, and that the company was having difficulty meeting requirements from its lenders.

Remington, America’s oldest gunmaker, announced in February it would reduce its $950 million debtload in a deal that will transfer control of the company to creditors. The company plans to wrap up its bankruptcy as soon as May 3, according to court papers.

The filing comes after a Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school that killed 17 and spurred an intense campaign for gun control by activists.

The massacre led to huge U.S. anti-gun rallies by hundreds of thousands of young Americans on Saturday.

In some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations for decades, protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue. Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds, signing up thousands of the nation’s newest voters.

Major U.S. companies and retailers have taken some steps to restrict firearm sales.

Citigroup Inc <C.N> said last week it will require new retail-sector clients to sell firearms only to customers who passed background checks and to bar sales of high-capacity magazines.

Citi also said it was restricting sales for buyers under 21, a move adopted by other large retailers, while Kroger Co’s <KR.N> superstore chain Fred Meyer said it will stop selling firearms entirely.

CERBERUS TO LOSE OWNERSHIP

Cerberus Capital Management LP, the private equity firm that controls Remington, will lose ownership in the bankruptcy.

Remington’s creditors, which sources told Reuters include Franklin Templeton Investments and JPMorgan Asset Management, will exchange their debt holdings for Remington equity.

The creditors inked the debt-cutting deal prior to the Parkland shooting, and it is unclear if any have exited. The restructuring support agreement allows creditors to sell their holdings, but the buyer is bound by the deal.

One investor told IFR, a Thomson Reuters news provider, that his firm had contemplated buying the Remington loans that will be exchanged into equity, which were offered at as low as 25 cents on the dollar.

“We bowed out because we were uncomfortable,” he said.

After a Remington Bushmaster rifle was used in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut in 2012 that killed 20 children and six adults, Cerberus tried unsuccessfully to sell Remington, then known as Freedom Group.

Katie-Mesner Hage, an attorney representing Sandy Hook families in a lawsuit against Remington, said in a prepared statement that she did not expect the gunmaker’s bankruptcy would affect their case.

Remington and other gunmakers have suffered from slumping sales in the past year as fears of stricter gun laws have faded.

The chief executive of American Outdoor Brands Corp, maker of the Smith & Wesson gun used in the Parkland shooting, said on March 1 that some gun retailers reported increased sales after the Florida school shooting.

Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Gopakumar Warrier)

Florida lawmakers to vote on gun laws, arming teachers

FILE PHOTO: Messages, posted on a fence, hang, as students and parents attend a voluntary campus orientation at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, for the coming Wednesday's reopening, following last week's mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Angel Valentin/File photo

(Reuters) – Florida’s Senate will vote on Monday on some gun-related measures in response to last month’s deadly school shooting, including a proposal to train and arm teachers, but lawmakers have rejected a call by some students to ban assault weapons in the state.

The proposed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act is named after the high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff were shot dead on Feb. 14.

Student survivors of the Parkland shooting have become prominent advocates for stricter gun laws, with some calling for a ban on semiautomatic assault-style rifles of the sort used in that attack and other recent U.S. mass shootings, as well as high-capacity magazines.

The state Senate rejected such a ban in a vote held over the weekend.

The Senate bill echoes many proposals made by Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, since the shooting, including new powers for police to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous by a court.

The bill would raise the minimum age for buying any kind of gun to 21, from a current minimum of 18 for all weapons but handguns. It would also ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire like fully automatic machine guns, and mandate a three-day waiting period for the purchase of all guns, not just handguns.

The Senate’s Republican majority is expected to vote to pass the bill, Katie Betta, a spokeswoman for Senate President Joe Negron, said. The measure will then move to the legislature’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives for a vote.

The bill would require the governor’s signature to take effect. Scott has said he opposes one of the bill’s more scrutinized measures: allowing county sheriffs to set up voluntary training programs to arm teachers to prevent future massacres, similar to an idea also proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Sheriffs who choose to set up a so-called “school marshal” program would have to ensure that any teacher or other school staff member who opts to become one has a valid license and has completed 132 hours of shooting and safety training.

The bill says that “a school marshal has no authority to act in any law enforcement capacity except to the extent necessary to prevent or abate an active assailant incident on a school premises.”

Some families of the victims from Douglas High School said they would hold a news conference on Monday afternoon about the legislature’s efforts, which would increase funding for school safety and mental health measures.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)