Jim Gard recognized the sound of gunshots as Nikolas Cruz opened fire on Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, eventually killing 17 people. Just a few weeks before, the teacher had been through a drill to prepare for a moment like this.
A GOP congressional candidate who hopes to represent Houston in the U.S. House of Representatives faces criticism for an untimely ad campaign heavily featuring guns. Kathleen Wall, who is vying for the seat of retiring GOP Rep.
Five students who survived the horrific shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School placed the blame solely on lawmakers from their own state, calling them "enablers" of the NRA.
Sitting down with CNN host Victor Blackwell, the five students who have started up a project called "Never Again MSD," went right after GOP officials by name.
"Wednesday's high school shooting has renewed the national conversation about gun control," Blackwell began. "Now the president says he's working with Congress on many fronts on this issue. In the meantime, some students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School say they feel abandoned and have a message for D.C.. You said that the governor and Senator Rubio murdered 17 people -- why?"
"It's Rick Scott and Marco Rubio who allowed this to happen," student Cameron Kasky explained. "They are enablers, and the blood of 17 people and all those injured and all the families that have been hurt, this is all on them. They have us thinking that this is inevitable, and that we can't do anything to stop it, that it's too difficult. We're done with that. The GOP has abandoned us and left us to people like Nikolas Cruz."
After sharing a clip of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) saying it was not time to take sides, Stoneman Douglas junior Alex Wind fired back.
"I disagree with that statement because it's very clear that there are two sides to this, and there are certain people that accept money from the NRA," he remarked. "I believe Speaker Ryan is one of those people. It doesn't seem that the country is coming together, it seems that they're sending prayers and condolences but not taking action like they need to be."
Asked about attacking the NRA, with Blackwell saying, the NRA "didn't pull the trigger," student Sawyer Garrity squarely put the blame on the NRA.
"They might not have pulled the trigger, but they're who allowed him to buy the gun," she told the CNN host. "Someone who isn't allowed to buy alcohol legally is allowed to buy a war weapon? Where does that make sense?"
Watch the video below via CNN:
By Elizabeth Englander, Professor of Psychology, and the Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC), Bridgewater State University. While politicians debate control, local communities can act now to keep kids safer at school.
The family who was housing Florida high school shooter Nikolas Cruz after his adoptive mother’s death in November never saw his violent attack that claimed the lives of 17 people coming. “They’re totally shocked,” Attorney Jim Lewis, who represents the Snead family, said following Wednesday devastating events.
The gun shop owners who sold Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz the AR-15 he used to fatally shoot 17 high school students this week have broken their silence on the tragedy via their attorneys. Speaking on behalf of Michael and Lisa Morrison, owners of Sunrise Tactical Supply, attorney Douglas Rudman told reporters on Thursday evening that the couple is distraught after learning their weapon was used in such a horrific event.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough took to Twitter Friday afternoon to fire back at "frothing at the mouth" critics who are furious that the former conservative lawmaker now supports stricter gun laws.
Following a morning diatribe on MSNBC, where he called President Donald Trump a "coward," adding, "Name one time when he hasn’t stepped out to try to show a little bit of original thinking, then he curls back up into fetal position and becomes cowardly and listens to the most extreme members of the black helicopter crowd,” Scarborough had enough of his online critics and replied in kind.
Scarborough began by reminding followers of his history with the NRA, writing, "As I have said publicly for years, while in Congress I was one of the 2nd Amendment’s strongest proponents. And even though the NRA worked nonstop to defeat me in my first campaign, they supported me after because I was always an unyielding advocate for gun rights. I still am."
From there he took on his critics, once mocking them by writing, "For those frothing at the mouth thinking they just broke open Al Capone’s safe, stop humiliating yourselves publicly."
You can read the sequence of tweets below:
MIAMI — Here are five things to know about Nikolas Jacob Cruz, the suspect in Wednesday's murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the third largest school shooting in United States history.
The 19 year old allegedly responsible for the Valentine’s Day massacre at a Florida high school may have snapped after his mother died suddenly from the flu, according to family members. RELATED: FBI may have known months in advance that Florida shooting suspect had plans to be a “professional school shooter” Watch the video Nikolas Cruz was arrested and taken into custody Wednesday after taking his AR-15 rifle into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School...
CBS Sports Radio host Jim Rome on Thursday veered off topic to discuss Wednesday's mass shooting at Florida high school.
"This is a sports show," Rome said at the beginning his radio broadcast. "And everything I talk about here today pales in comparison to the murder of at least 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It's hard for me to care about the Lakers and the Pelicans or the Olympics or anything else in the world of sports."
He continued: "When you see that kind of horror and you see that kind of devastation, when you see children running for their lives, when you see parents in the kind of pain that no parent should ever, ever have to experience, when you here the story of an assistant football coach who was killed while protecting and helping students, reportedly using his own body to shield three of them."
Rome pointed to the remarks of Golden State head coach Steve Kerr, who summed up the shooting by slamming lawmakers who have refused to pass gun safety laws.
"We can do something about it," Kerr said. "We can vote people in who actually have the courage to protect people's lives and not just bow down to the NRA because they've financed their campaign. Hopefully we will find enough people with courage to help our citizens remain safe and focus on the real safety issues and not building some stupid wall."
Rome lamented the number of times he had been forced to discuss mass shootings on his sports show.
"The list goes on and on and on," he remarked. "And we all know what happens next. We know the drill because we've been here before. There's a mass murder in a school or a movie theater or at a concert. News crews set up, interviews are done, everybody says 'thoughts and prayers', we read about the people whose lives have been ripped away -- and then nothing changes."
"We say, 'never again,'" Rome said. "And then it happens again and again and again. How many times do we have to see this? How many kids need to be murdered in schools before we say enough is enough?"
Rome explained that he was focusing on the shooting instead of sports because he was not hosting "an ignorant show."
"I'm not going to sit here and say nothing because saying nothing and doing nothing leads to this happening again and again and again," the broadcaster insisted. "We've done nothing every single time and more and more people are dying. Our children are getting slaughtered."
Rome admitted that he did not have the solution to mass shootings.
"But I know what is not the answer: just saying thoughts and prayers," he said. "Something has to be done. This is not normal and we're allowing it to become normal."
Some of Rome's listeners suggested on Twitter that they had been caught off guard by the rant, but most approved.
Listen to the audio below.
Gun laws in Florida, which on Wednesday experienced one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, received a failing grade and need to be fixed to save lives, according to a study on Thursday from a center to prevent firearm violence.
The findings in an annual survey from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence also said U.S. states with strong gun safety laws have fewer average gun death than states with weaker laws.
The study was completed before a 19-year-old man who had been expelled from his Parkland, Florida, high school was charged with 17 counts of murder, after authorities say he opened fire at the school on Wednesday.
Florida, which also had one of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history when a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, received a failing grade in the study for its gun laws.
To raise its grade, Florida could enact universal background checks, regulate firearm dealers and repeal its "Stand Your Ground," self-defense law that critics say allow people too much leeway to pull the trigger.
Half of all states received an F grade, according to the study.
"Year after year, our research shows that states that get serious about passing stronger gun violence prevention laws have a much better chance of reducing the number of deaths linked to
firearms," said Robyn Thomas, the center's executive director.
The powerful gun rights lobby, the National Rifle Association, has said the U.S. government should enforce existing gun laws and new ones are not needed.
When asked to comment on the Florida shooting, NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said: "We have a longstanding policy of not commenting until the facts are known."
Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has supported gun ownership rights, told a news conference on Thursday he plans to speak soon with lawmakers on keeping schools safe and finding ways to make sure people with mental illness cannot access firearms.
"The violence has to stop," he said without mentioning any specific gun control policy proposals. His office was not immediately available for comment.
The Giffords Law Center study looked at firearms regulations and shooting death rates in all states.
It found of the 10 states with the lowest gun rate deaths, eight have some of the strongest gun laws: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, California and Washington.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bill Trott)
Florida Democratic Party Chairman Juan Cuba called out state Republican lawmakers on Thursday for a plan to discuss loosening background check laws just a day after 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
In a message posted to Facebook hours after the shooting, Cuba accuses Republicans of being "cowards bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association."
"Because FL Republicans are cowards bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association, they snuck in a gun provision inside of the Agriculture bill making its way through Tallahassee," Cuba writes. "SB740 is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee TOMORROW Thursday Feb. 15 at 1 PM."
Cuba noted that bill is intended to deal with "oyster harvesting, revising standards of water vending machines, and more."
"However, conveniently tucked in pages 88-90 of this 98 page bill is language that would require the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to grant a Concealed Weapons Permit applicant their permit within 90 days, even if a full background check has not been completed," he revealed. "No one should be granted a concealed weapons permit unless a full background check has been completed. That's just common sense."
Cuba concluded by calling on voters to contact their representatives "and ask that they remove this language from the bill."
At the time of publication, the bill had not been taken off the schedule to be discussed at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
(h/t: Grant Stern)
Broward Country Schools Superintendent Rob Runcie reacted to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Thursday by calling for a conversation on gun control.
At a press conference about the shooting that left 17 dead, Runcie explained that he had been getting calls from students asking for a discussion about "sensible" gun safety laws.
"Now is the time for this country to have a real conversation about sensible gun control," he said. "So our students are asking for that conversation."
"And I hope that we can get it done in this generation," Runcie added. "But if we don't, they will."
Watch the video clip below.
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