Parkland killings: high school students unite against weapons

At the end of March, a demonstration to demand stricter gun control will be organized by the surviving students of the Parkland massacre.

Survivors of the Florida shooting announced on Sunday that they will demonstrate in late March in Washington for tighter control over firearms, a recurring debate that the United States routinely fails to advance. Named "March for Our Lives", the event will take place on March 24 in Washington and other cities across the country. It aims to "demand that a complete and effective bill be immediately presented to the Congress" to solve "the problems of violence by weapons that are widespread in our country," according to the website dedicated to the event.

Nikolas Cruz, a former high school student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, north of Miami, fired a semi-automatic rifle Wednesday in the corridors of the facility, killing 17 people, most of them teenagers. Aged 19, he had obtained the authorization to buy his weapon despite reports of violent behavior. The couple in which he lived since November, however, said in an interview published Sunday that he had not at any time perceived his tendencies to violence. "We had this monster under our roof and we did not know it," said 49-year-old nurse Kimberly Snead of the Florida daily Sun Sentinel.

Many voices have emerged since the massacre denouncing the links between the political world and the powerful pro-arms NRA (National Rifle Association) lobby that would prevent a reinforcement of the legislation in Congress. "It's not against the Republican Party or against the Democrats," Cameron Kasky, a college student in the mourning high school, told ABC. "Every politician on both sides who receives money from the NRA is responsible for this type of event," he said, denouncing the NRA that "defends and promotes this culture of arms." The lobby is based on the second amendment to the Constitution which guarantees the right to own and carry a weapon.

Create a new normality

Nearly 15,600 people were killed by a firearm in 2017 in the country of some 320 million people, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which does not count suicides.

The goal is "to create a new normality where it would be considered a shame for politicians to accept NRA money," Cameron Kasky added. Another high school student in Florida, Emma Gonzalez, called on all American students to get involved in this cause. "They have to join us to get our message across," said the terminale student, who had strongly denounced the NRA's financial support for the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

With other students at Stoneman Douglas High School, Emma Gonzalez will participate in a televised debate on CNN Wednesday, which will be broadcast nationwide. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who has been criticized for accepting millions of dollars in political funding from the arms lobby, has announced on Twitter that he will also participate. Also Wednesday, President Trump will receive high school students and teachers to "listen", announced the White House, without specifying who would participate in this meeting.

The debate over arms control is revived after each deadly shootout, but the US Congress routinely fails to legislate. Resistance to arms control is strong in the Republican camp but also in some Democrats, admitted on CNN Democratic MP Adam Schiff, ensuring that it was time for the Congress "to move and do what the country asks him: ignore the NRA and make the right decision. " But Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich doubted the real will of parliamentarians to engage in substantive reform, suggesting "reasonable", "small step" specific changes, such as tighter control of buyers.

Others want more weapons. The shootings are "the fault of the people who do that and our inability to stop them," said Sunday on Fox the conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, resuming the line of the NRA. Schools "are prohibited areas to weapons and whoever wants to shoot at a school knows he will be the only one to be armed," he said. According to him, the only way to avoid such shootings is to allow concealed carry on campuses, as is already the case in several US states.