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I find this article very interesting. There is a chronic disease that afflicts more than 200 million people per year but it is so fascinating that they came up with the idea of growing worms in their body for 12 weeks to find a vaccination for the disease schistosomiasis

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At least two potential vaccines for "schisto" were recently approved for early stage human trials. The traditional path forward, which would cost millions, requires setting up a study in an afflicted area and using only people who have already been exposed to the worms. Obtaining financing for future development is expected to be a struggle.

"You get yourself in a Catch-22," said Dr. Peter J. Hotez the dean of National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, who has spent the last 15 years trying to develop a vaccine. Donors, he said, want proof that the vaccine will work in people before committing funds. But it's hard to offer proof without money.

Dr. Roestenberg's study, known as a challenge trial, aims to prove that there is a quick and affordable way to test the vaccine in people. That could help the prototype Dr. Hotez has developed with Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development advance more quickly. But "there is too much uncertainty," he says.

The first time that people are exposed to Schistosoma mansoni larvae, they can have an acute reaction known as Katayama fever or develop a central nervous system infection, which in rare cases causes irreversible neurological damage or death.

By dosing young, healthy volunteers with just 20 male larvae - incapable of reproducing inside their host - Dr. Roestenberg says she has vastly minimized the risks.

But if the subjects' health can be ensured, Dr. Hotez questions whether there will be enough of a detectable infection to show that a vaccine is working.

So far there has been no reason for alarm in the study underway, Dr. Roestenberg said. As soon as the larvae passed through their skin, all of the volunteers displayed a bit of a rash. One had a mild fever. But all this was expected and 24/7 medical care is available should a more serious issue arise. At the end of the study, all will be given Praziquantel, which is supposed to clear any infection and kill the remaining parasites.

Other schistosomiasis researchers were critical of this point. Daniel Colley at the University of Georgia told Science magazine, which first reported on the study, that the drug is "not terribly effective" and given that the worms' life span is five to 10 years, "That is a long time to have something as ugly as a schistosome living in your blood vessels, putting out excrement and things."

But it is precisely because of the drug's limitations that another researcher, Dr. James Collins at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said that he is convinced that "the benefits outweigh the risks."

For now, dozens of male worms have eight weeks until they are expelled from the veins of the Dutch students. For their trouble, each volunteer was paid about $1,200.

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They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease

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At least two potential vaccines for "schisto" were recently approved for early stage human trials. The traditional path forward, which would cost millions, requires setting up a study in an afflicted area and using only people who have already been exposed to the worms. Obtaining financing for future development is expected to be a struggle.

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Achieving a delicate balance.

But then The New York Times and The New Yorker disclosed allegations of decades of sexual harassment and assault against Harvey Weinstein - the powerful producer and Academy Awards tour de force - roiling the entertainment business and setting off the #MeToo and Time's Up movements. (Mr. Weinstein has denied ever having had "nonconsensual sex.") Now the Oscars, designed as a big commercial for Hollywood glamour, will have to address the systemic problem of sexual harassment in show business.

"We think we've figured out a way to do it all," Jennifer Todd, one of the lead producers for the ceremony, said in a recent interview.

In other words, the show must go on.

Prepare to stay up late.

Last year's show ran 3 hours and 49 minutes, with the most dramatic moment coming right at the end, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty mistakenly presented the best-picture trophy to "La La Land" instead of "Moonlight" after a PwC accountant handed them the wrong envelope. Ms. Dunaway and Mr. Beatty are scheduled to return to present the best picture Oscar. Not returning: Brian Cullinan and Martha L. Ruiz, the PwC accountants responsible for last year's bungle.

Some races provide little suspense.

Frances McDormand was favored to win her second Academy Award for best actress, having been honored in 1996 for her you-betcha performance in "Fargo." She was nominated this time for playing an extremely fed-up mother in the divisive "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." Allison Janney was expected to receive the supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Tonya Harding's hard-bitten mother from hell in "I, Tonya."

Gary Oldman, who transformed himself into a gurgly Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour," was the favorite to win best actor. The Hollywood establishment will be shocked if anyone other than Sam Rockwell collects the supporting actor Oscar, for his racist dimwit of a police officer in "Three Billboards."

Best director appears to be another fait accompli. Guillermo del Toro was expected to receive that honor for "The Shape of Water," which stars Sally Hawkins as a mute cleaning lady who falls for a merman held captive in a government lab. Mr. del Toro, who was omnipresent at get-out-the-vote events in recent months, has already collected the best director prizes at the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America Awards and other predictive pre-Oscar ceremonies.

Best Picture is up for grabs.

The best picture race has been unusually competitive, with no consensus among movie insiders about which film is the favorite. "The Shape of Water" has won precursor contests, including the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards, that often result in Oscar gold.

But Mr. del Toro's film, which has the most nominations (13) of any contender, became enmeshed in a copyright infringement lawsuit during voting, and it failed to receive a nod for best ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. No film since "Braveheart" (1995) has been named best picture without a SAG ensemble nomination.

That makes the winner of this year's SAG ensemble award, "Three Billboards," a candidate to win the best picture trophy. "Three Billboards," directed by Martin McDonagh, also was the biggest winner at the Baftas, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

A third possibility is that "Get Out," Jordan Peele's satirical take on racism in the liberal white suburbs, could come from behind to win. That would be quite a feat since few horror movies have ever achieved best-picture status. (One exception: "The Silence of the Lambs," which won in 1992.) "Get Out," with four total nominations, also has another bit of history working against it: Oscar historians say no film has won best picture with fewer than five nods since "Cavalcade" in 1933.

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three billboards outside ebbing  missouri (movie)

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Achieving a delicate balance. But then The New York Times and The New Yorker disclosed allegations of decades of sexual harassment and assault against Harvey Weinstein - the powerful producer and Academy Awards tour de force - roiling the entertainment business and setting off the #MeToo and Time's Up movements.

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A teacher saw a suspicious man holding a gun in the woods. She called a lock- down and called the police for investigation. The man was camouflaged in the woods, so it created more suspicion. Teachers play a big role in schools. They are holding a job with many roles and responsibilities. One big responsibility is protecting children's lives. This woman protected their lives by calling a lock down.

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Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

The most recent calculations of the number of school resource officers, from 2013, showed that about 30 percent of schools had one, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, just 1 percent had.

In some cases, it is not an easy job to fill, according to Mr. McDonald of Jefferson County. "Most cops don't get into law enforcement to be in school," he said. "They want to be on the street catching bad guys."

That problem has helped feed a stereotype that school officers are not the cream of their departments.

Mac Hardy, director of operations for the national organization, said bad school resource officers fall into three categories - "hostages," those who are ordered to work in schools; "retirees," older officers who are nursing their pensions; and "vacationers" who like having school holidays off, though many work as regular patrol officers during the summer.

"You've been on the job 20 years and we've got to park you someplace. We're going to put you in a school," Mr. McDonald said, describing the attitude he said some departments have. "That's much less of an effective model. We want go-getters."

As the first line of defense, school resource officers are often hailed as heroes when school incidents are defused, or, as in the case of Deputy Peterson, criticized for failing to avert disaster. Mr. Peterson, who resigned from the department, has disputed accusations that he did not fulfill his job, saying through his lawyer that he believed the shots were coming from outdoors and so he waited for the gunman there.

One of the heroes was Deputy Carolyn Gudger, who faced off an armed school intruder in 2010, becoming the toast of her eastern Tennessee community, which named her grand marshal of the Food City 250 Nascar race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The man had arrived at the school and asked to meet with the principal, then drew a semiautomatic handgun. Deputy Gudger pushed the principal out of harm's way, drew her gun and held the intruder at bay, negotiating with him for 10 minutes even as he still had his gun drawn.

Other officers arrived and killed him when he refused to drop the weapon. Officer Gudger said she heard criticism that she should have shot the man right away. "I can't give you a concrete answer on that," she said last week. "It just wasn't the time to do it."

Some researchers have attempted to gauge whether school resource officers actually make schools safer. A Congressional Research Service report released after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 said that some studies suggested that the officers' presence deterred assaults and discouraged students from bringing weapons to campus. The report also noted that students in officer-staffed schools might be more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses.

In 2016, the Obama administration expressed concern about unnecessary arrests after police and sheriff's departments in several areas, including East Hartford, Conn., and Washington State, were criticized for handcuffing students too readily. Several years earlier, following similar criticism there, Broward County officers and schools created a program to avoid arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct and alcohol and marijuana use.

Jeff Bell, president of the Broward Sheriff's Office Deputies Association, a labor union, said that while the union did not want to "fill jails with juveniles," it felt the policy may have prevented Mr. Cruz from getting appropriate social services. Had Mr. Cruz been T past misbehavior at school, which reportedly included episodes of assault, "we could have gotten court-ordered mental health care and family services that he so desperately needed," Mr. Bell said. "We could have taken the guns away."

But Robert W. Runcie, the Broward schools superintendent, said the program had been a success. Some 2,000 students have gone through it, and 90 percent have never had a repeat offense, according to Mr. Runcie.

Mr. Runcie said it was inaccurate to suggest Mr. Cruz avoided arrest because of the new program. Mr. Cruz had "serious behavior disorders" that fell under the district's special education program, the superintendent said. And records show he did receive counseling over the years.

Asked whether she had ever averted an attack, Corporal Revels, the Alabama officer, said that several years ago, she began monitoring a student who had a habit of pushing, kicking and bullying other students. "I went deeper and found writings and drawings that were concerning," she said, and saw to it that the student began mental health treatment.

On the day of the lockdown - it was unclear if the gun-toting man was real, or perhaps a wandering hunter - Corporal Revels also helped a kindergartner who had dropped his breakfast get new helpings of sausage and apple juice; saw a teenager storm out of Spanish class, talked with him briefly, and had him back in class in five minutes; complimented students on their choice of pajamas for the school's Pajama Day; and then drove home to her farm an hour away, where she would respond to three phone calls regarding bullying or other misbehavior at school.

Takaya Dupree, a 12th-grader, said Corporal Revels knew almost every student well, since she had been around the school for years. "So I feel like she'll protect us," Takaya said.

Even if a gunman burst into the school?

"It wouldn't get to that point," she said. "She'll probably talk him out of it, before he came to the school."

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national assn of school resource officers

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Stephanie Saul, Timothy Williams and Anemona Hartocollis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
School Officer: A Job With Many Roles and One Big Responsibility

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Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

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This article explains how to monitor your own kids while they use the internet. Nowadays the internet is dangerous and parents should be involved in children online life too.

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Q. Can Windows 10 track how much time a child spends playing games?

A. If the child is using a specially configured Microsoft account, the "family" feature built into Windows 10 can compile reports about how a session was spent - including any games played on the computer or on an Xbox One console. These activity reports are emailed to a parent's account and list the games and apps used by the child, along with the websites browsed. The keywords used on search engines are also noted - as long as either the Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer browser was used.

The Windows 10 parental controls can set limits on a child's screen time, as well as the types of content available without getting permission. To set up the family options, a parent needs to be signed into a Windows 10 PC with a Microsoft account. The parent then needs to create a separate Microsoft account for the child - and persuade the child to log in and use it.

To set up the child's account, go to the Start menu, select the gear-shaped Settings icon and choose Accounts. On the Accounts screen, select "Family & other people" and then "Add a family member." Choose "Add a child." If the child does not have a personal email address already, you can create one here. The child uses this address to log into the new Windows 10 account.

Parents can manage children's accounts online. The Windows 10 Settings area has a link to the Family options, too. A quick way to get there is to tell the Cortana assistant to open the Windows Defender Security Center and then tap Family options.

Mac-owning families have similar parental controls built into Apple's operating system. To set them up, open the System Preferences icon in the Mac's desktop dock (or under the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of the screen) and click the Parental Controls icon.

Third-party parental control programs like Net Nanny and Qustodio cost money, but these programs typically offer a wider range of protection and tools to monitor young users.

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Tools to Keep Your Children in Line When They're Online

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Q. Can Windows 10 track how much time a child spends playing games? A. If the child is using a specially configured Microsoft account, the "family" feature built into Windows 10 can compile reports about how a session was spent - including any games played on the computer or on an Xbox One console.

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this article talks about how the president of Russia and the president of the United states talks about their cyberweapons

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By comparison, the United States is still uncertain how to make use of its cyberweapons after spending billions of dollars to build an arsenal. It is concerned that the Russians - along with the Chinese, the Iranians and the North Koreans - could easily retaliate against any attack, striking American banks, utilities, stock markets and communications networks.

And in the nuclear sphere, the Trump administration has yet to offer a strategy to contain or deter Russia beyond simply matching the weapons buildup. Mr. Trump himself has largely remained silent about his vision to contain Russian power, and has not expressed hope of luring Moscow into new rounds of negotiations to prevent a recurrent arms race.

The threat that Russia poses on both fronts has helped push the United States to declare a fundamental shift on national security: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis asserted in January that "great power competition," not terrorism, is now the primary American focus.

Washington's response - at least in the nuclear realm - also harks back to the Cold War era: a cycle of move and countermove. This time, however, it involves not just building larger stockpiles, but also developing new types of weapons of greater sophistication, matched with more advanced missile defenses.

"Putin has become the best friend of the U.S. nuclear arms industry," said nonproliferation expert Gary Samore. He negotiated with the Russians during the Clinton administration, when optimism ran high that the era of nuclear competition was over, and again during the Obama administration, after Mr. Putin had begun Moscow's current nuclear modernization.

The Pentagon believes that many of the new plans that Mr. Putin announced last week to bolster his arsenal - including undersea nuclear torpedoes, nuclear cruise missiles and other new weapons - are years away from deployment. He has called his new missiles "invincible," as some can evade missile defenses, and started a contest to name them.

Mr. Putin has blamed the United States' failure to embrace past arms control treaties as the reason for his buildup. But he has particularly complained about American nuclear defenses, which he said were aimed as much at Russia as they were at North Korea. American officials have said that is a wild misstatement of the technology's reach.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Mr. Trump demanded that Congress "modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal." That was followed in February by the administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which was more specific. It called for new, low-yield nuclear weapons that it justified on the basis of recent Russian advances. It also described in detail a once top-secret Russian autonomous nuclear torpedo that is designed to cross the Pacific.

Additionally, the nuclear review abandoned earlier promises by the Obama administration that nuclear weapons would be a diminishing part of American security and defense. "Past assumptions that our capability to produce nuclear weapons would not be necessary and that we could permit the required infrastructure to age into obsolescence have proven to be mistaken," the document said.

Drafts of a new missile defense strategy, which may be published later this month, include suggestions that the program may now turn to developing missile defenses against Russia and China, not just countering states like North Korea with smaller arsenals.

"We must no longer think in terms of building just 'limited' missile defense capabilities," concluded a report that was issued last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "The United States should begin the journey to develop a next-generation missile defense."

It called for pursuing a "space-based kill layer" that would try to shoot down swarms of enemy warheads and missiles - a step that would go beyond the Reagan administration's "Star Wars" research on space arms and no doubt prompt new rounds of reaction from Mr. Putin and the Russian military.

Particularly striking is the absence of much interest in Washington or Moscow for arms control talks.

From President John F. Kennedy's time in office through President Barack Obama's, new treaties were negotiated that first limited atmospheric testing, then the numbers of weapons that could be deployed. The result was an 85 percent decline in the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

But the most recent arms reduction treaty, called New Start, expires in early 2021. Mr. Trump has not expressed interest in renewing it. And there is evidence that even before its scheduled sunset, expensive new cycles of technological action and reaction are beginning to take shape.

Over the past few months, most talk of restraint has been cast to the wind as Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump take steps to rebuild their arsenals, according to arms control advocates. Doing so portends a new generation of nuclear weapons, as such moves and countermoves create a rationale for building more.

Lisbeth Gronlund, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Cambridge, Mass., said Mr. Putin's announcement last week "further ratchets up what is clearly a new arms race, making the world a more dangerous place."

But what worries veterans of that Cold War is less the new technology than the old rhetoric.

"None of this changes the fundamental picture of what the U.S. and Russia do to each other," Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor who is one of the directors of the Managing the Atom project, told a group of journalists at the Nieman Foundation in Cambridge on Friday.

He said what is changing "is the degree of tension" that revives the dangers of miscalculations that could lead to military action - the great fear at the height of the Cold War during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The cyberchallenge is the newest one, and thus is not captive to the strategies of past generations. But in public statements in recent weeks, Mr. Trump's top intelligence officials have conceded that the president has yet to discuss strategies with them to prevent the Russians from interfering in the midterm elections this year. Mr. Trump has expressed severe doubts that the Russians meddled in 2016, contradicting the conclusions of his intelligence officials.

Two days before General Nakasone's hearing last week, the man he would replace at the N.S.A. and Cyber Command - Adm. Michael S. Rogers - offered striking testimony in what is likely to be his last public appearance on Capitol Hill before leaving office.

Four years ago, after he took command, Admiral Rogers said one of his goals was to assure that American adversaries would "pay a price" for their cyber actions against the U.S. that "will far outweigh the benefit" derived from hacking. He also frequently said that the retaliation might not necessarily be a counter-cyberstrike, but could involve economic sanctions or diplomatic isolation.

However, last week Admiral Rogers conceded that his own test had not been met.

Pressed about what pressure he had put on the Russians, he said: "We're taking steps, but we're probably not doing enough." He also dismissed sanctions that Congress approved last year - and that Mr. Trump has failed to impose - as insufficient to change "the calculus or the behavior" of Mr. Putin.

At General Nakasone's confirmation hearing two days later, Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said that "the problem is not technical," but political, given the United States' impressive cyberarsenal.

"We are not responding in any way that's adequate to the challenge we face," Mr. Sasse said.

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arms control and limitation and disarmament

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united states defense and military forces

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center for strategic and international studies

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A Russian Threat on Two Fronts Meets an American Strategic Void

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By comparison, the United States is still uncertain how to make use of its cyberweapons after spending billions of dollars to build an arsenal. It is concerned that the Russians - along with the Chinese, the Iranians and the North Koreans - could easily retaliate against any attack, striking American banks, utilities, stock markets and communications networks.

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After the deadly shooting that happened in Parkland, Florida  in February. The state of Florida has been trying very hard to get gun control laws passed. Since Florida Is a republican state it is a lot harder to pass gun control laws. But people are not holding back people , really want change.

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The 15 Democrats in the State Senate presented a united front, but it mattered little. Republicans hold 23 of the Senate's 40 seats (two are vacant), leaving Democrats with too few votes to block bills on their own. And though the map of State Senate districts was redrawn by court order in 2016 to make it more fair, only a few Republican senators represent competitive districts, where voting against gun control might hurt them in a general election.

As a result, Democrats managed to get just one amendment passed: adding 12 hours of required diversity training for participants in the program to arm teachers. That was meant to address black lawmakers' concerns that teachers with guns might discriminate against black students in deciding when to use them.

South Florida is not like the rest of Florida.

Students from the school in Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, sprang into political action after losing classmates and teachers in the Feb. 14 mass shooting. They traveled by the busload to Tallahassee, meeting with lawmakers, chanting in hallways and protesting on the steps of the State Capitol in favor of stricter gun laws.

But Parkland is in Broward County, the most heavily Democratic county in Florida. No Republican senator represents any part of the county; there was no chance of one breaking party ranks to side with student survivors from the district.

The only two Republican senators who did consistently vote with the Democrats on Saturday were Anitere Flores and René García, representing neighboring Miami-Dade County. That is Florida's most populous and most urban county, where even Republican constituents tend to be less strident about gun rights than in the rest of the state.

A third Republican senator, Tom Lee from the Tampa Bay area, joined in efforts to scrap the statewide armed-teacher program, which he called needlessly divisive, noting that local sheriffs and school superintendents can already set up such programs where they are wanted.

Midterm politics are at play.

Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has maintained that he does not want to arm teachers. He is widely expected to run for a United States Senate seat later this year, and knows he will have to appeal to voters beyond his own party in a race against the incumbent Democrat, Bill Nelson.

But the calculus is different for the speaker of the House, Richard Corcoran, a likely candidate for governor in a crowded Republican field. Mr. Corcoran would like to appeal to President Trump's voter base in his party's primary, and he has backed the armed-teacher program enthusiastically, calling it a "game changer."

The Senate president, Joe Negron, also a Republican, suggested a possible compromise on Friday, arming noninstructional school personnel rather than teachers. Mr. Scott did not respond last week when asked whether he would accept that.

One way or another, though, Mr. Scott has said he is determined to pass the gun package, which would also include significant funding for school safety and mental health measures, before the end of the annual legislative session, which is scheduled to wrap up on Friday.

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Here Is Why Florida Has So Much Trouble Passing Gun Laws

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The 15 Democrats in the State Senate presented a united front, but it mattered little. Republicans hold 23 of the Senate's 40 seats (two are vacant), leaving Democrats with too few votes to block bills on their own.

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A teacher saw a suspicious man holding a gun in the woods. She called a lock- down and called the police for investigation. The man was camouflaged in the woods, so it created more suspicion. Teachers play a big role in schools. They are holding a job with many roles and responsibilities. One big responsibility is protecting children's lives. This woman protected their lives by calling a lock down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

The most recent calculations of the number of school resource officers, from 2013, showed that about 30 percent of schools had one, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, just 1 percent had.

In some cases, it is not an easy job to fill, according to Mr. McDonald of Jefferson County. "Most cops don't get into law enforcement to be in school," he said. "They want to be on the street catching bad guys."

That problem has helped feed a stereotype that school officers are not the cream of their departments.

Mac Hardy, director of operations for the national organization, said bad school resource officers fall into three categories - "hostages," those who are ordered to work in schools; "retirees," older officers who are nursing their pensions; and "vacationers" who like having school holidays off, though many work as regular patrol officers during the summer.

"You've been on the job 20 years and we've got to park you someplace. We're going to put you in a school," Mr. McDonald said, describing the attitude he said some departments have. "That's much less of an effective model. We want go-getters."

As the first line of defense, school resource officers are often hailed as heroes when school incidents are defused, or, as in the case of Deputy Peterson, criticized for failing to avert disaster. Mr. Peterson, who resigned from the department, has disputed accusations that he did not fulfill his job, saying through his lawyer that he believed the shots were coming from outdoors and so he waited for the gunman there.

One of the heroes was Deputy Carolyn Gudger, who faced off an armed school intruder in 2010, becoming the toast of her eastern Tennessee community, which named her grand marshal of the Food City 250 Nascar race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The man had arrived at the school and asked to meet with the principal, then drew a semiautomatic handgun. Deputy Gudger pushed the principal out of harm's way, drew her gun and held the intruder at bay, negotiating with him for 10 minutes even as he still had his gun drawn.

Other officers arrived and killed him when he refused to drop the weapon. Officer Gudger said she heard criticism that she should have shot the man right away. "I can't give you a concrete answer on that," she said last week. "It just wasn't the time to do it."

Some researchers have attempted to gauge whether school resource officers actually make schools safer. A Congressional Research Service report released after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 said that some studies suggested that the officers' presence deterred assaults and discouraged students from bringing weapons to campus. The report also noted that students in officer-staffed schools might be more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses.

In 2016, the Obama administration expressed concern about unnecessary arrests after police and sheriff's departments in several areas, including East Hartford, Conn., and Washington State, were criticized for handcuffing students too readily. Several years earlier, following similar criticism there, Broward County officers and schools created a program to avoid arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct and alcohol and marijuana use.

Jeff Bell, president of the Broward Sheriff's Office Deputies Association, a labor union, said that while the union did not want to "fill jails with juveniles," it felt the policy may have prevented Mr. Cruz from getting appropriate social services. Had Mr. Cruz been T past misbehavior at school, which reportedly included episodes of assault, "we could have gotten court-ordered mental health care and family services that he so desperately needed," Mr. Bell said. "We could have taken the guns away."

But Robert W. Runcie, the Broward schools superintendent, said the program had been a success. Some 2,000 students have gone through it, and 90 percent have never had a repeat offense, according to Mr. Runcie.

Mr. Runcie said it was inaccurate to suggest Mr. Cruz avoided arrest because of the new program. Mr. Cruz had "serious behavior disorders" that fell under the district's special education program, the superintendent said. And records show he did receive counseling over the years.

Asked whether she had ever averted an attack, Corporal Revels, the Alabama officer, said that several years ago, she began monitoring a student who had a habit of pushing, kicking and bullying other students. "I went deeper and found writings and drawings that were concerning," she said, and saw to it that the student began mental health treatment.

On the day of the lockdown - it was unclear if the gun-toting man was real, or perhaps a wandering hunter - Corporal Revels also helped a kindergartner who had dropped his breakfast get new helpings of sausage and apple juice; saw a teenager storm out of Spanish class, talked with him briefly, and had him back in class in five minutes; complimented students on their choice of pajamas for the school's Pajama Day; and then drove home to her farm an hour away, where she would respond to three phone calls regarding bullying or other misbehavior at school.

Takaya Dupree, a 12th-grader, said Corporal Revels knew almost every student well, since she had been around the school for years. "So I feel like she'll protect us," Takaya said.

Even if a gunman burst into the school?

"It wouldn't get to that point," she said. "She'll probably talk him out of it, before he came to the school."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national assn of school resource officers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Stephanie Saul, Timothy Williams and Anemona Hartocollis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
School Officer: A Job With Many Roles and One Big Responsibility

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

# data[].attributes.body
t

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At least two potential vaccines for "schisto" were recently approved for early stage human trials. The traditional path forward, which would cost millions, requires setting up a study in an afflicted area and using only people who have already been exposed to the worms. Obtaining financing for future development is expected to be a struggle.

"You get yourself in a Catch-22," said Dr. Peter J. Hotez the dean of National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, who has spent the last 15 years trying to develop a vaccine. Donors, he said, want proof that the vaccine will work in people before committing funds. But it's hard to offer proof without money.

Dr. Roestenberg's study, known as a challenge trial, aims to prove that there is a quick and affordable way to test the vaccine in people. That could help the prototype Dr. Hotez has developed with Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development advance more quickly. But "there is too much uncertainty," he says.

The first time that people are exposed to Schistosoma mansoni larvae, they can have an acute reaction known as Katayama fever or develop a central nervous system infection, which in rare cases causes irreversible neurological damage or death.

By dosing young, healthy volunteers with just 20 male larvae - incapable of reproducing inside their host - Dr. Roestenberg says she has vastly minimized the risks.

But if the subjects' health can be ensured, Dr. Hotez questions whether there will be enough of a detectable infection to show that a vaccine is working.

So far there has been no reason for alarm in the study underway, Dr. Roestenberg said. As soon as the larvae passed through their skin, all of the volunteers displayed a bit of a rash. One had a mild fever. But all this was expected and 24/7 medical care is available should a more serious issue arise. At the end of the study, all will be given Praziquantel, which is supposed to clear any infection and kill the remaining parasites.

Other schistosomiasis researchers were critical of this point. Daniel Colley at the University of Georgia told Science magazine, which first reported on the study, that the drug is "not terribly effective" and given that the worms' life span is five to 10 years, "That is a long time to have something as ugly as a schistosome living in your blood vessels, putting out excrement and things."

But it is precisely because of the drug's limitations that another researcher, Dr. James Collins at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said that he is convinced that "the benefits outweigh the risks."

For now, dozens of male worms have eight weeks until they are expelled from the veins of the Dutch students. For their trouble, each volunteer was paid about $1,200.

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They're Hosting Parasitic Worms in Their Bodies to Help Treat a Neglected Disease

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At least two potential vaccines for "schisto" were recently approved for early stage human trials. The traditional path forward, which would cost millions, requires setting up a study in an afflicted area and using only people who have already been exposed to the worms. Obtaining financing for future development is expected to be a struggle.

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But telecommunications companies - hoping to cash in on what is predicted to be $250 billion in annual service revenue from 5G by 2025 - are pushing to build the system as quickly and cheaply as possible. And they have the federal government on their side.

The companies, like Verizon Communications and AT&T, say that the equipment will be safe and unobtrusive, and that it is needed to support future applications like driverless cars. Dotting them throughout neighborhoods is necessary for full coverage, they say, because the new 5G signals do not travel as far as the radio frequencies now in use.

The new equipment, AT&T told the Federal Communications Commission last year, "will revolutionize the way consumers and businesses use mobile broadband services, and of the emerging internet of things."

To get their way, the telecom firms have lobbyists working state legislatures, advocating laws that restrict local oversight of 5G. Since 2016, 13 states have passed bills that limit local control, and several other states are considering similar laws. Wireless companies are also lobbying Congress, which is considering several bills on the issue.

And the F.C.C., under the leadership of Ajit Pai, its Republican chairman, has strongly encouraged weakening regulations to accelerate the deployment of new 5G technology - including reducing the role of local governments.

This week, another Republican F.C.C. commissioner, Brendan Carr, announced details of a plan to streamline the environmental and historic review process for 5G infrastructure, saying it could cut costs by 80 percent. The agency will vote on the measure this month.

Mr. Pai and Mr. Carr have said regulatory changes are necessary to keep pace with global competitors. But bringing high-speed service to underserved areas - closing the digital divide - has also been one of Mr. Pai's central arguments for reining in local regulations. The money companies save from fewer regulations, he says, can be used to expand broadband into rural areas.

City officials are not buying it. Mobilitie, one of the nation's largest cell-tower operators, submitted an unofficial plan in Montgomery County, Md., in the fall, designating where the company might want to place small cells. Of the 215 small-cell sites in that plan, only 11 were in areas with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile.

"It is deeply disingenuous to suggest that the need to pre-empt urban areas' ordinances is so we can bring broadband to rural areas," said Mitsuko R. Herrera, the county's technology special projects director. "There is zero evidence to support that premise."

Jason Caliento, a Mobilitie senior vice president, agreed. "Small cells are a tool in the toolbox, but alone are not going to solve the rural divide," he said.

In January, Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose, Calif., resigned his seat on an F.C.C. 5G advisory committee, saying it was rigged to give industry what it wanted "without any obligation to provide broadband access to underserved residents."

In response, Mr. Pai said the F.C.C. looked forward to working with the committee "to remove regulatory barriers to broadband deployment and to extend digital opportunity to all Americans."

The wireless industry has filed multiple comments to the F.C.C. complaining about delays from local governments. AT&T executives said officials in California, whom they did not identify, had delayed deployment of small cells by more than 800 days because they "scrutinized" antenna designs, radio-frequency exposure and effects on property values, among other things. Companies have suggested cutting local approval windows by a month or more.

Cities and counties argue the delays are caused by the wireless companies themselves. Officials in Montgomery County said Mobilitie had routinely filed incomplete applications that caused months of setbacks.

Mobilitie officials said their relationship with local governments was "evolving" and leading to better collaboration. "I don't think we've ever seen more progress" than has occurred lately, Mr. Caliento said.

City officials say shortening reviews risks small-cell facilities becoming unsightly and unsafe.

That is what worries Donna Baron, a 75-year-old retiree who learned a streetlight near her home on DuFief Drive in North Potomac, Md., was marked to become a small cell, as were dozens more nearby. She held up an image of a possible cell station that might replace the light.

"The pole is a lot rounder, it has boxes on it and a huge fake mailbox at the bottom," Ms. Baron said. If the F.C.C. pre-empts local rules, "you're going to end up with a Medusa, with a bunch more stuff attached."

Wireless companies are also asking the F.C.C. to cap local fees. AT&T says that three California cities assess fees of $2,600 to $8,000 a year per attachment, and that a "Georgia municipality is considering an annual fee of $6,000 per node."

David Young, who manages infrastructure leases for Lincoln, Neb., said he understood the carriers' frustration. But he said cities had a responsibility to charge fair rates. He has negotiated with wireless companies to pay $1,995 a year per pole. He set the rate based on market analysis, which he discussed with the companies. "They were quite happy to pay the price that we asked," Mr. Young said.

Texas cities can't negotiate rates. Last year, the State Legislature passed a law pushed by AT&T that allows cities to charge carriers no more than $250 per pole each year. Before the law, cities often charged $1,500 to $2,500 a year per pole, and the change will cost Texas cities as much as $1 billion over eight years, the Texas Municipal League estimated.

AT&T argues that charging fees not based on cost violates the federal Communications Act, which blocks local governments from prohibiting broadband services.

A group of Texas cities led by the city of McAllen, near the Mexico border, filed a lawsuit last year against the state, arguing that the new cell-site law violated the state Constitution, which prohibits the Legislature from forcing cities to grant something of value to corporations.

Lawyers representing Texas argue the state has the authority to cap municipalities' pole rental fees. During oral arguments in December, a judge denied the state's motion for dismissal, and last month denied the cities' request for a temporary injunction. The case is expected to go to trial this year.

The maneuvering in Washington has left people like Marc King, 71, a longtime resident of Germantown, Md., feeling resigned.

"A Russian woman stood up to speak at one of these public meetings, and she said that when she lived in Russia, the government slam dunked her and she had no say," Mr. King said. "Now she lives in the United States of America, where she's getting slam dunked by the government and she has no say. That gives you a window into what's going on here."

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5G Cell Service Is Coming. Who Decides Where It Goes?

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But telecommunications companies - hoping to cash in on what is predicted to be $250 billion in annual service revenue from 5G by 2025 - are pushing to build the system as quickly and cheaply as possible. And they have the federal government on their side.

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Jon Romano, who is currently serving his time in prison due to an attempt at a mass shooting, looks back on what he had done and mentions how regretful he is for it. On a Monday morning in February 2004, he was hunched over in a stall sending a message to his friends. "I'm in school with shotgun." --- "[G]et out." He picked up his new 12-gauge pump action shotgun and fired two times before the assistant principal, John Sawchuk, tackled him to the ground. More than a decade later, he not only thanks Sawchuk for saving his classmates, but also his own life.

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On an icy Monday morning in February 2004, Jon Romano was hunched in a bathroom stall on the third floor of his high school outside of Albany, N.Y., tapping out a text message to his few friends.

"I'm in school with shot gun," he wrote, the New York Times would later report. "Get out."

Clad in a long black leather coat, the 16-year-old then washed his hands, picked up a brand-new Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, and stepped into a hallway at Columbia High School. He fired two blasts before Assistant Principal John Sawchuk tackled the 6-foot-2, 230-pound teenager. As the two struggled, a third shot ripped from the gun, hitting the legs of a special-education teacher named Michael Bennett. Although bullets came close enough to graze a student's baseball cap, no one else was hit. There were no fatalities.

More than a decade later, the shooter not only credits Sawchuk with saving his classmates but his own life. Last week, prompted by a column in his hometown paper revisiting his 2004 attack in light of the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Romano wrote a letter to the Times Union.
[ Inside a teen shooter's mind: A plot to kill '50 or 60. If I get lucky maybe 150.' ]
"John Sawchuk is a hero who I owe my life to," Romano wrote from Coxsackie Correctional Facility in New York, where he is serving a 20-year-sentence. "I know that every time another horrible shooting happens, he and all of my victims are hurt all over again by what I did to them. I want to take away their pain, but knowing I cannot, I want to prevent others from experiencing this pain."

The letter - a rare look inside the matured mind of a surviving mass shooter - expressed regret about the 2004 incident and solidarity with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students now pressing for gun control.

"I believe the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland are courageous and inspiring for speaking out and demanding action from politicians," Romano wrote. "Everyone nationwide should follow and accept nothing less than meaningful, life-saving policy changes from their representatives. Only then could this generation be the last generation that lives in a nation plagued by gun violence."

Mass shooters do not usually survive the carnage they create, much less provide later thoughts about their younger selves. As the Sun-Sentinel reported in the wake of the attack on Stoneman Douglas last month, of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, Nikolas Cruz, who is charged in the Parkland massacre, is the only gunman or suspected gunman to survive his attack.

In 2013, Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, published a study about mass shooter survival rates based on a statistical analysis of 185 incidents in which two or more people were killed or injured. As Popular Science reported, the results showed that mass shooters died in 48 percent of the attacks, 38 percent by suicide and the rest by "suicide by cop." The study also showed that for every person a mass shooter killed, the likelihood of their death rose by 1.2 times. For every weapon a shooter carried, the shooter was 1.73 times more likely to die.

This leaves law enforcement officials with little insight into the minds of mass shooters - creating a dangerous hole for authorities trying to devise safety nets for preventing another attack.

In a rare exception, in October 2014, Esquire's Tom Junod spent time with an unnamed man who as a teenager was stopped before launching an attack.

"What did I want? I wanted release," the would-be mass shooter told Junod. "It's not a desire for death. It's a desire for escape - transport and escape. You've run out of options, and so you think of changing your life in the craziest way possible - something where you won't be able to go back. It's almost a cure for who you are. You know, maybe if this happened, I'd feel calm. I'd feel the way they do. I'd feel peace."

Ramano pushed back against the stereotypical portrayal of mass shooters even in 2004. Following his arrest after the shooting, police found a long rambling note by Romano at his home.

"I'm NOT A MONSTER," the note read. "How am I different than what the media says school shooters are?" he added, before listing his favorite humorous television shows, including "Family Guy" and "SNL."

"I like to laugh! Comedies are good! I'm not what the media says I should be."

In December 2004, Romano pleaded guilty to attempted murder and reckless endangerment. He was given a 20-year sentence.

In his recent note to the Times Union, Romano pledged to "advocate for gun safety and mental health reform after my release in 2021."
More from Morning Mix: 'Kill all white people': Accused killer who targeted white victims now charged in six murders Prominent Harvard professor placed on leave following accusations of decades of sexual harassment Oscars: Twitter's #HereWeAre TV ad draws criticism

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In 2004, he walked into school with a shotgun. Today - from prison - he weighs in on Parkland.

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On an icy Monday morning in February 2004, Jon Romano was hunched in a bathroom stall on the third floor of his high school outside of Albany, N.Y., tapping out a text message to his few friends. "I'm in school with shot gun," he wrote, the New York Times would later report.

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This article describes about how the first thing that a student will realize when they walk in is their security guard in the school. Because a security guard's role is to keep order on the school, they are the ones who will be the most in danger when or if a gunman entered the school. Most of the members are apart of the local forces, and because there is no specific training to be a security guard it makes it easier.

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Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

The most recent calculations of the number of school resource officers, from 2013, showed that about 30 percent of schools had one, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, just 1 percent had.

In some cases, it is not an easy job to fill, according to Mr. McDonald of Jefferson County. "Most cops don't get into law enforcement to be in school," he said. "They want to be on the street catching bad guys."

That problem has helped feed a stereotype that school officers are not the cream of their departments.

Mac Hardy, director of operations for the national organization, said bad school resource officers fall into three categories - "hostages," those who are ordered to work in schools; "retirees," older officers who are nursing their pensions; and "vacationers" who like having school holidays off, though many work as regular patrol officers during the summer.

"You've been on the job 20 years and we've got to park you someplace. We're going to put you in a school," Mr. McDonald said, describing the attitude he said some departments have. "That's much less of an effective model. We want go-getters."

As the first line of defense, school resource officers are often hailed as heroes when school incidents are defused, or, as in the case of Deputy Peterson, criticized for failing to avert disaster. Mr. Peterson, who resigned from the department, has disputed accusations that he did not fulfill his job, saying through his lawyer that he believed the shots were coming from outdoors and so he waited for the gunman there.

One of the heroes was Deputy Carolyn Gudger, who faced off an armed school intruder in 2010, becoming the toast of her eastern Tennessee community, which named her grand marshal of the Food City 250 Nascar race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The man had arrived at the school and asked to meet with the principal, then drew a semiautomatic handgun. Deputy Gudger pushed the principal out of harm's way, drew her gun and held the intruder at bay, negotiating with him for 10 minutes even as he still had his gun drawn.

Other officers arrived and killed him when he refused to drop the weapon. Officer Gudger said she heard criticism that she should have shot the man right away. "I can't give you a concrete answer on that," she said last week. "It just wasn't the time to do it."

Some researchers have attempted to gauge whether school resource officers actually make schools safer. A Congressional Research Service report released after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 said that some studies suggested that the officers' presence deterred assaults and discouraged students from bringing weapons to campus. The report also noted that students in officer-staffed schools might be more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses.

In 2016, the Obama administration expressed concern about unnecessary arrests after police and sheriff's departments in several areas, including East Hartford, Conn., and Washington State, were criticized for handcuffing students too readily. Several years earlier, following similar criticism there, Broward County officers and schools created a program to avoid arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct and alcohol and marijuana use.

Jeff Bell, president of the Broward Sheriff's Office Deputies Association, a labor union, said that while the union did not want to "fill jails with juveniles," it felt the policy may have prevented Mr. Cruz from getting appropriate social services. Had Mr. Cruz been T past misbehavior at school, which reportedly included episodes of assault, "we could have gotten court-ordered mental health care and family services that he so desperately needed," Mr. Bell said. "We could have taken the guns away."

But Robert W. Runcie, the Broward schools superintendent, said the program had been a success. Some 2,000 students have gone through it, and 90 percent have never had a repeat offense, according to Mr. Runcie.

Mr. Runcie said it was inaccurate to suggest Mr. Cruz avoided arrest because of the new program. Mr. Cruz had "serious behavior disorders" that fell under the district's special education program, the superintendent said. And records show he did receive counseling over the years.

Asked whether she had ever averted an attack, Corporal Revels, the Alabama officer, said that several years ago, she began monitoring a student who had a habit of pushing, kicking and bullying other students. "I went deeper and found writings and drawings that were concerning," she said, and saw to it that the student began mental health treatment.

On the day of the lockdown - it was unclear if the gun-toting man was real, or perhaps a wandering hunter - Corporal Revels also helped a kindergartner who had dropped his breakfast get new helpings of sausage and apple juice; saw a teenager storm out of Spanish class, talked with him briefly, and had him back in class in five minutes; complimented students on their choice of pajamas for the school's Pajama Day; and then drove home to her farm an hour away, where she would respond to three phone calls regarding bullying or other misbehavior at school.

Takaya Dupree, a 12th-grader, said Corporal Revels knew almost every student well, since she had been around the school for years. "So I feel like she'll protect us," Takaya said.

Even if a gunman burst into the school?

"It wouldn't get to that point," she said. "She'll probably talk him out of it, before he came to the school."

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national assn of school resource officers

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Stephanie Saul, Timothy Williams and Anemona Hartocollis

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School Officer: A Job With Many Roles and One Big Responsibility

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Every school in New York City has at least one school safety officer, who are employed by the New York Police Department and can make arrests, but are unarmed. The department also assigns armed officers to certain schools.

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I'm all for guns but I believe some of the more powerful ones should be banned. It seemed necessary for the mother to have a gun due to her location. While the gun saved the day in this case, i could have ended horrifically if any shot had been fired. Guns are necessary for security purposes. Some guns however should only be available to police and the military.

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Right around when my dad left, when I was 3 years old, our neighborhood on Long Island experienced a crime wave of burglaries, which led my mother to keep guns in various parts of the house in case she needed one at a moment's notice. That decision turned a story with a potentially tragic ending into one about a heroic single mother and her young daughter. Our incident won't show up in the statistics about gun use in self-defense scenarios. I doubt my mother ever reported it to the police.

While it may seem counterintuitive to those who didn't grow up around guns, in our house we saw them as tools of protection and empowerment for two women living alone.

After my first child, a daughter, was born I must have printed the paperwork required to obtain a gun permit in New Jersey a dozen times. Despite what many may think, the process is not simple nor is it quick, which led to my procrastinating for several years.

Over the Republican primary season, I was an outspoken conservative critic of then-candidate Donald Trump, and a torrent of hate rolled my way. I would later learn just how much: The Anti-Defamation League named me one of the top 10 Jewish journalists to be attacked by the alt-right during the election season. After years of receiving death threats for my conservative views, months of being attacked by the alt-right and then having our address published online by the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, I pushed myself to finally go through the process of asking friends for letters attesting to my character, obtaining fingerprints and submitting to background checks.

I was given a reason to feel that I needed to defend myself and my family. And I acted on it.

In the wake of every mass shooting, there are renewed calls for gun control, and a demonization of the National Rifle Association (of which I was but am no longer a member). We are told that it's not our guns - the guns of legal and responsible gun owners - that would be taken away, but those of the bad guys. But when those advocating bans don't even understand the mechanics and basic terminology of guns, it doesn't inspire confidence.

All Americans should expect law enforcement agencies, which missed opportunities to stop not just the Parkland shooter, but also the shooters in the Charleston and Sutherland Springs churches and the Orlando nightclub, to be able to protect us. You can forgive conservatives if we don't believe that giving federal law enforcement officials more authority is the solution to shootings they bear some responsibility for.

That's, in part, why many gun owners insist the answer isn't a ban, but rather evaluating who can obtain these weapons. President Trump is now reportedly considering the idea of gun restraining orders, which have the ability to quickly take firearms away from those considered dangerous, like the shooter in Parkland. A variation of this law is already on the books in California. In 2016, 86 of these restraining orders were issued, and 10 were extended past the initial 21-day period they were granted for. Our side insists that people are the problem, not guns, and to make good on that we need to come to the table with ideas on how to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous individuals who have no business holding them.

This idea, popularized in a piece by National Review's David French after the Parkland shooting, isn't a panacea. But it is a middle ground for gun-rights supporters and gun-control activists to meet. Many supporters of the Second Amendment know something is broken, just as its opponents do, and ideas like Mr. French's can bring many more to the negotiating table than calling for outright bans on guns or the notion that there are no legislative solutions to the gun violence issue.

But such a compromise will require gun-control activists to confront the lie of one of their favorite talking points: that gun-rights supporters care more about guns than children. For many, support for gun rights is motivated precisely by our devotion to protecting our kids.

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Opinion | I Wanted to Be a Good Mom. So I Got a Gun.

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Right around when my dad left, when I was 3 years old, our neighborhood on Long Island experienced a crime wave of burglaries, which led my mother to keep guns in various parts of the house in case she needed one at a moment's notice.

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It seems that most people hate millennials. From the generation before, to the generation after, no-one wants to be associated with their cursed name. They are often blamed for ruining many of life's great joys. According to the Census Bureau, millennials were the largest American age group in 2015, with 83.1 million Americans born from 1982 to 2000.

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But who could blame these youngsters for not wanting their generational brand sullied by association with the dreaded millennial? According to the news media, we have ruined things from marmalade to motorcycles. Not even Halloween has been spared our wrath.

Paula, a 21-year-old in New Orleans who responded to The Times's online question about what to call the next generation, wrote that she was tired of "hearing about the infantile antics of millennials." (Unfortunately for her, both Pew and the Census Bureau classify her as one.)

"We are trying to step out from under the shadow of millennials by working hard and not expecting the world to fall in our laps," she said. "We are realistic but determined to succeed."

So how do you decide where to draw the line between one generation and the next?

It's not an exact science, and the determination may rely in part on intuition. After all, the center said, at the ripe old age of 37, "the oldest millennials are well into adulthood, and they first entered adulthood before today's youngest adults were born."

According to the Census Bureau, millennials were the largest American age group in 2015, with 83.1 million Americans born from 1982 to 2000. That exceeds the number of baby boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964, who numbered 75.4 million) and members of Generation X (those born from 1965 to 1980, who numbered 65 million).

In a more systematic view, the events that shaped a person's early life - and whether he or she can remember them - are a primary consideration, Ruth Igielnik, a research associate at the Pew Research Center, said in an interview.

For example, millennials as well as some people born after 1996 were alive during the Sept. 11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latest recession and the 2008 presidential election.

But while millennials came of age - and became politically and socially conscious - against the backdrop of those events, members of the younger generation may not remember them at all. And the impact of those events on their lives may have been muted, she said.

"Many millennials came of age and entered the work force at the height of the economic recession, but many young adults today are entering the work force in an era of economic growth and low unemployment," she said.

That means members of the younger generation may not face the same obstacles to their earning power and their ability to make life choices, like buying a home or marrying, that many millennials have struggled with.

Technology plays a role, too. Can you remember the sound a dial-up modem used to make when it connected to the internet? Did you ever own a flip phone? Can you still hear the tinny voice of AOL announcing, "You've got mail"?

People born after 1996 may not remember any of those things. For many, high-speed Wi-Fi and touch-screen smartphones have always been a part of life, and "You've Got Mail" is just an old movie in their parents' Netflix queue.

That is why Emma Morrow, 20, said she thought her generation should be known as the Mobile Generation.

"We were born into a world where computers could travel with us," she said. "Everything is mobile."

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Are You 21 to 37? You Might Be a Millennial

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But who could blame these youngsters for not wanting their generational brand sullied by association with the dreaded millennial? According to the news media, we have ruined things from marmalade to motorcycles. Not even Halloween has been spared our wrath.

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I was surprised to find out how two of the biggest leading gun sellers, Walmart and Dick’s made the move first for the guy control. They would have a great loss in their market however, they decided to limit the age group of 20 and younger. Also Walmart announced that they would stop selling anything resembling assault rifles. I was very shocked and proud to hear this from Walmart. Not selling assault rifles will be a great loss however, I am proud that they made the right choice. Both company saw the tragic event in Florida which caused 17 people to die due to young people using assault rifles.

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Two of the nation's leading gun sellers, Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods, took steps on Wednesday to limit their sales of firearms, thrusting themselves into the middle of the polarizing national debate over gun control.

Walmart, the biggest gun seller, announced late in the afternoon that it would not sell any gun to anyone under 21 years of age. It also said it would no longer sell items resembling assault-style rifles, including toys and air guns.

Early in the day, Dick's said it was immediately ending sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores. The retailer also said that it would no longer sell high-capacity magazines and would also require any gun buyer to be at least 21, regardless of local laws.

Under federal law, a person must be at least 21 to buy a handgun from a firearms dealer. But 18-year-olds can buy semiautomatic rifles and other firearms.

The dual announcements, made two weeks after 17 students and staff members were killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., were among the most significant actions taken on guns by corporate America. Both retailers said their decision were a response to the shooting.

Earlier, President Trump met at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and called for a series of gun control measures, some of which the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed.

Walmart and Dick's acted after a number of major companies moved last week to dissociate themselves from the N.R.A. Hertz car rental, MetLife insurance and Delta Air Lines, among others, publicly ended their relationships with the organization.

In a news release late Wednesday, Walmart noted that in 2015 it discontinued the sale of high-powered rifles, including AR-15-style weapons, in its stores in the United States. But at the time, Walmart sidestepped any controversy involving gun politics, attributing its decision to lower customer demand for the military-style rifles.

This time, Walmart directly linked its action to the shooting in Florida, saying, "In light of recent events, we've taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales."

Top Walmart executives made the decision and then informed the board, a company spokesman said.

Walmart sells guns in roughly half of its nearly 4,000 supercenters, the company said, but the sheer scale of its customer base gives its decision significant heft. Every week, more than 150 million people around the country shop at Walmart.

Dick's decision was announced by Edward Stack, the 63-year-old chief executive whose father founded the store in 1948. Mr. Stack made clear that he was deliberately steering his company directly into the storm over gun reform.

"When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset," Mr. Stack said in an interview. "We love these kids and their rallying cry, 'Enough is enough.' It got to us."

He added, "We're going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation."

The decision drew immediate - and passionate - reaction on social media. By midday, the number of Twitter messages containing Dick's name had jumped 12,000 percent from the average over the previous 10 days, according to Sprout Social, a social media management, advocacy and analytics software platform.

About 79 percent of the tweets had a positive sentiment, Sprout Social said, including supportive messages from Hollywood actors and actresses.

But the company's critics posted their plans to no longer shop at the retailer, some closing their tweets with "#boycott."

Investors did not appear to worry about a backlash, as Dick's stock spent much of Wednesday trading about 1.8 percent higher before finishing up 0.69 percent.

Mr. Stack said Dick's hoped to move the conversation beyond social media and into the political realm. As part of its stance, the company is calling on elected officials to pass what it called "common sense gun reform": raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21, banning assault-type weapons and so-called bump stocks, and conducting broader background checks that include mental-health information and previous interactions with law enforcement.

This is not the first time that Dick's has made changes in response to a school massacre. In 2012, after a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dick's removed assault-style rifles from its main stores. But a few months later, the company began carrying the firearms at its outdoor and hunting retail chain, Field & Stream.

As of Wednesday morning, the company said, AR-15-style and other semiautomatic rifles will no longer be sold in its 35 Field & Stream stores or on its websites. And this time, Mr. Stack added, the changes will be permanent.

Mr. Stack said the retailer had begun scouring its purchase records shortly after the identity of the suspected Parkland killer, Nikolas Cruz, became known. The company soon discovered that it had legally sold a gun to Mr. Cruz in November, though it was not the type used in the school shooting.

"But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story," Mr. Stack said. "We said, 'We don't want to be a part of this any longer.'"

That response raised rounds of discussions with the company's top executives and its directors, all of whom backed the decision to take a stand, Mr. Stack said.

He said Dick's remained a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and would continue to sell a variety of sport and hunting firearms. Although he has never been a member of the N.R.A., Mr. Stack said, he is a gun owner and enjoys trapshooting.

But when it comes to selling guns to individuals under 21 or stocking assault-style rifles, Mr. Stack said, his company is done. "We don't want to be a part of a mass shooting," he said.

The company said that it had not decided what to do with its inventory of assault-style rifles but that they would not be sold in the marketplace.

Legal experts said they saw no likely challenges to Dick's decision to stop selling assault-style rifles. But the decision to stop selling weapons to anyone under 21, however, could be tested in court.

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles, said Dick's could be challenged in lawsuits claiming a violation of laws that bar age discrimination. Although federal civil rights laws do not apply, some states, including New York, prohibit businesses from denying goods and services on the basis of age.

"Don't be surprised if an aggressive attorney general of a gun-friendly state brings an age-discrimination claim against Dick's," Professor Winkler wrote in an email response to questions.

The company said that it believed its decision was in accordance with the law and that it was instituting the policy immediately.

Matthew Haag contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods Tighten Rules on the Guns They Sell. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Walmart and Dick's Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21

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Two of the nation's leading gun sellers, Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods, took steps on Wednesday to limit their sales of firearms, thrusting themselves into the middle of the polarizing national debate over gun control. Walmart, the biggest gun seller, announced late in the afternoon that it would not sell any gun to anyone under 21 years of age.

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When you're dehydrated there's less water in your blood stream. When you drink, you're instantly refreshed. It takes about 10-15 minutes for the water to get to your blood stream though. If you drink way too much water at a time it could be bad. It would be to diluted in your bloodstream, and there is a possibility from dying from that. Biologists have been studying neutrons in the area of the brain that regulates thirst. They found that certain neutrons were responsible for telling other cells in the thirst center that you are drinking water.

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In the last few years, biologists have been mapping the neurons within an area in the brain that regulates thirst, said Yuki Oka, a professor at Caltech and senior author of the new paper, which was published Wednesday in Nature. Cells in this region had been observed going quiet after an animal had water, but it was not clear exactly why.

A graduate student in Dr. Oka's laboratory, Vineet Augustine, did a series of experiments with mice that had been genetically modified to make tracing the connections between their neurons easier. In these experiments, when a neuron caused another neuron to turn off, it got tagged, leaving a trail of bread crumbs through the brain.

What Mr. Augustine found was that certain neurons in a region called the median preoptic nucleus were responsible for telling other cells in the thirst center that drinking was occurring. Further experiments showed that mice without functioning versions of these neurons drank twice as much as normal mice. In the opposite scenario, when the cells were artificially activated, even dehydrated mice did not experience thirst.

Intriguingly, what these cells are responding to is not the presence of water itself, Mr. Augustine said. The researchers discovered that letting a mouse take big gulps of water would spur the neurons into action. But giving it water in a gel form, which had to be chewed before it could be swallowed, did not. Neither did providing water in tiny, two-second-long sips, even when the animals consumed the same total amount of water. In fact, giving the mice oil to drink had just the same effect on the neurons as gulping water.

"That indicated to us that it's probably the speed - the speed of this ingestion - to which these neurons are responding," Mr. Augustine said.

Apparently, a series of quick swallows is an evolutionarily acceptable shorthand for drinking water - reliable enough for the body to use it as a way to signal when enough has been consumed.

Aside from the specter of water intoxication, there are good reasons to drink only the minimum amount necessary. When an animal lowers its head to drink, Dr. Oka speculated, it's in quite a vulnerable position. "If you double the time of ingestion, that should double the risk of being prey," he said.

The researchers are now hoping to investigate other ways the body monitors water intake. For instance, they want to see whether there are sensors in the gut that keep the brain apprised of the arrival of water. It seems likely, Mr. Augustine said, that the brain gets some notice, and adjusts accordingly.

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You Get Thirsty and Drink. How Does Your Brain Signal You've Had Enough?

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In the last few years, biologists have been mapping the neurons within an area in the brain that regulates thirst, said Yuki Oka, a professor at Caltech and senior author of the new paper, which was published Wednesday in Nature.

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Mr. Primus, a fan of the show, had been visiting friends in Texas and drove back with a friend to Florida on Saturday, calculating a route that would place them in Tallahassee at precisely 2 p.m., the time that McDonald's announced it would start giving the sauce away.

They arrived at 2 p.m., but it was too late: The restaurant had already run out.

"I kind of did a little bit of a yell of sorts," he said. "It was a disappointing drive home."

Mr. Primus had plenty of company. Although some fans were lucky - and in some cases tried to sell the sauce on eBay - McDonald's had underestimated just how popular it would be.

Employees were inundated with requests.

I work at McDonald's, and these rick and morty freaks keep asking me about some sauce. I want to punch them all in the mouth.
- (@) Oct. 7, 2017

At a McDonald's in Los Angeles, a crowd chanted, "Szechuan sauce! Szechuan sauce!" as employees tried to maintain order.

Dominick Tao, 31, a graduate student in New York, visited three McDonald's restaurants on Saturday afternoon. At one of them, he spoke with people in line who told him they had been there since 8 a.m.

For Mr. Tao, who is also a "Rick and Morty" fan, the sauce was steeped in nostalgia. He remembered eating it at McDonald's with his family when it was first released.

He was hooked.

"It increased my McDonald's consumption probably twofold," he said. "I would beg my mom to take me back to McDonald's."

Tasting the sauce again would have been "fulfilling a childhood dream," he said. Even so, he wasn't willing to wait hours in line. He struck out at two other locations before eventually giving up.

As of Sunday evening, the McDonald's Twitter account was still featuring a photo of the limited-edition sauce. The company apologized for the shortage in a pinned tweet: "The best fans in the multiverse showed us what they got today. We hear you & we're sorry not everyone could get some super-limited Szechuan."

A promotional website for the sauce, which was meant to lift sales of its new Buttermilk Crispy Tenders, invited fans to "get obsauced" - with the caveat that the Szechuan sauce could only be found in select locations. "When we say limited, we mean really, really limited!" the website said.

But in its statement later on Sunday, McDonald's said: "We're gonna make this right. In the last 24 hours, we've worked to open any portal necessary. And it worked."

Until then, making it from scratch might be the best option.

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'Rick and Morty' Fans Wanted Their Sauce. McDonald's Underestimated Just How Much.

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Mr. Primus, a fan of the show, had been visiting friends in Texas and drove back with a friend to Florida on Saturday, calculating a route that would place them in Tallahassee at precisely 2 p.m., the time that McDonald's announced it would start giving the sauce away.

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The documents generally did not appear to indicate that the colleges were involved with or even knew of the payments. But late Friday night, Yahoo Sports reported that emails from Dawkins, which federal investigators had obtained, seemed to show him in contact with assistant coaches not only at Oklahoma State and Arizona - where two former assistants have been charged - but also at Indiana and Michigan State.

Several schools said they were looking into the report and pledged full cooperation. Duke's athletic director, Kevin White, said that Carter had no eligibility issues related to the report. Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo said that he had no reason to believe anyone in the program had committed violations. An Indiana spokesman told Yahoo Sports that he had not heard the allegation before.

Miller, ASM Sports's former president, was not one of the defendants in the federal cases, but he gave up his accreditation as an N.B.A. agent in December. The office of ASM Sports was raided in September, shortly after the complaints were released, and Miller's computer was seized. Miller was a longtime agent whose past clients included stars like Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups. More recent clients included the Toronto Raptors' Kyle Lowry (whose name appears in the documents) and the Knicks' Kristaps Porzingis.

In the schemes outlined by federal officials, top high school basketball players were virtually for sale to the highest bidder, namely, teams backed by shoe companies. The process required fake purchase orders, coaches' assents - and, crucially, middlemen like youth-league coaches, money managers and agents. Dawkins, who was Miller's employee, was a particularly eager facilitator, according to federal investigators.

Dawkins's lawyer was not immediately available to comment Friday. Dawkins argued in a court filing that the case against him wrongly depicted what might be N.C.A.A. violations as lawbreaking, saying that an indictment "seeks to criminalize purported violations of the rules of a private, voluntary association."

Earlier this week, three of the case's 10 defendants, including Dawkins, lost on a motion to dismiss the case; they had contended that what they were accused of doing did not constitute a federal crime. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that an undercover agent who had worked the investigation had been accused of misappropriating funds, threatening his ability to serve as a witness.

It is not clear how teams will respond to Friday's report. Under N.C.A.A. rules, they are supposed to hold out players whom they suspect of being ineligible. Michigan State may feel compelled not to play Bridges, the Spartans' best player, when it enters next week's Big Ten tournament as a national title contender.

The bracket for the N.C.A.A. tournament will be released in a little more than two weeks, with the games themselves commencing a few days later. It is unclear what impact Friday's news will have on that event, perhaps the most prominent on the college sports calendar and the one that is indispensable to the N.C.A.A.'s finances.

"These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America," Mark Emmert, president of the N.C.A.A., said in a statement released on Friday.

In September, federal prosecutors in the United States Southern District of New York revealed three complaints painting a portrait of widespread corruption in the nebulous marketplace of college basketball recruiting. Four assistant coaches at high-major programs were said to have taken bribes in order to persuade players to sign with an agent or money manager upon reaching the N.B.A. In another complaint, unnamed coaches, an Adidas executive and others were accused of attempting to funnel money to recruits in exchange for their commitments to teams sponsored by Adidas and for pledges to sign with the apparel company later on.

Prosecutors said the defendants had violated federal law. But it is also likely that, if the allegations are true, their programs would have violated N.C.A.A. rules, which bar teams from paying players beyond a scholarship and related costs; from offering recruits inducements beyond ones strictly delineated in the N.C.A.A. rule book; and from playing athletes who were ineligible because, for example, they accepted illicit money.

The scandal cost several coaches their jobs and could affect the eligibility of current players. It also felled Rick Pitino, the Hall of Fame coach at Louisville, who according to someone familiar with the complaint was said to have spoken to the Adidas executive about securing the commitment of a top prospect. Pitino has vigorously denied any involvement or knowledge of the scheme.

Last year, in response to the federal probe, Emmert convened an N.C.A.A. commission to examine men's basketball. It is chaired by the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

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Report Ties Players at Top College Basketball Programs to Illicit Payments

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The documents generally did not appear to indicate that the colleges were involved with or even knew of the payments. But late Friday night, Yahoo Sports reported that emails from Dawkins, which federal investigators had obtained, seemed to show him in contact with assistant coaches not only at Oklahoma State and Arizona - where two former assistants have been charged - but also at Indiana and Michigan State.

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Lucy Bak

February 28th was the first day students returned to school after the mass shooting in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Students return to classes to mourn together. Students and parents were comforted with counselors and therapy dogs who welcomed them from the traumatic event. Students had opposite reactions to returning. Some wanted to get together and go on for the victims of the shooting, but some are still in a situation where they are not ready to go back to the school where their friends were killed.

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"I'm scared to go back," Madison Lackey, 14, said.

Even to get onto the vast school campus again, students and their parents had to thread their way past heavily armed police officers and television cameras and pass through an exterior fence that is now decorated with banners of grief and condolence and garlanded with fading memorial flowers.

As they approached the school, the students walked past a phalanx of police officers from nearby cities and teachers from their old middle and elementary schools who waved signs of support.

"Welcome back, welcome back," one sheriff's deputy said.

The school has said it would have extra counselors to meet with students, and it will be days - if not weeks - before students return to their regular lessons. The school's principal, Ty Thompson, said on Twitter that the focus of the week would be on healing, and classes are being dismissed at 11:40 for the rest of the week in an effort to let the students acclimate to being back.

"There is no need for backpacks," he wrote. "Come ready to start the healing process and #RECLAIM THE NEST"

The night before they headed back, many of the young survivors took to Twitter and Facebook and other social media channels where they have been fomenting a new movement for tougher gun laws. They shared poems, words of inspiration and even said they were revved up about waking early.

"I've never anticipated a 6 a.m. alarm more in my entire life," wrote Cameron Kasky, 17.

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland  fla)

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Scared but Resilient, Stoneman Douglas Students Return to Class

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"I'm scared to go back," Madison Lackey, 14, said. Even to get onto the vast school campus again, students and their parents had to thread their way past heavily armed police officers and television cameras and pass through an exterior fence that is now decorated with banners of grief and condolence and garlanded with fading memorial flowers.

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It was February 14,when an ex student of Stoneman Douglas High School walks in and fired at his former classmates. Scary part of this? He was armed with the same type of weaponry that our military is equipped with. All of the major shootings in our past, they were all military similar type guns. The Ar-15 style guns are now being banned. They will not be manufactured anymore.

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When a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle that allowed him to fire upon people in much the same way that many American soldiers and Marines would fire their M16 and M4 rifles in combat.

A Marine shooting a standard rifle used by the military.

The gunman firing a civilian variant during the Parkland shooting.
( This video is graphic.)

C.J. Chivers is a reporter for The New York Times, a former Marine infantry officer and the author of "The Gun," a history of assault rifles and their effects upon security and war.

Since 2007, at least 173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s, according to a New York Times analysis. The grim list includes crimes in Newtown, Conn.; Las Vegas; San Bernardino, Calif.; and now Parkland, Fla.

The main functional difference between the military's M16 and M4 rifles and a civilian AR-15 is the "burst" mode on many military models, which allow three rounds to be fired with one trigger pull. Some military versions of the rifles have a full automatic feature, which fires until the trigger is released or a magazine is empty of ammunition.

But in actual American combat these technical differences are less significant than they seem. For decades the American military has trained its conventional troops to fire their M4s and M16s in the semiautomatic mode - one bullet per trigger pull - instead of on "burst" or automatic in almost all shooting situations. The weapons are more accurate this way, and thus more lethal.

The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups highlight the fully automatic feature in military M4s and M16s. But the American military, after a long experience with fully automatic M16s reaching back to Vietnam, decided by the 1980s to issue M16s, and later M4s, to most conventional troops without the fully automatic function, and to train them to fire in a more controlled fashion.

What all of this means is that the Parkland gunman, in practical terms, had the same rifle firepower as an American grunt using a standard infantry rifle in the standard way.

Representative Brian Mast of Florida, a Republican and an Army combat veteran, has called for a ban on the sale of AR-15-style rifles.

"The exact definition of assault weapon will need to be determined," Mr. Mast said. "But we should all be able to agree that the civilian version of the very deadly weapon that the Army issued to me should certainly qualify."

Joe Plenzler, a 20-year combat veteran of the Marine Corps, is part of a social media movement of military veterans, including those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, calling for reforms on the sale or possession of modern military-style firearms.

"They are the Formula One cars of guns, designed to kill as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible," Mr. Plenzler said, referring to AR-15-style rifles. "We are seeing battlefield-level casualties because we are allowing those weapons on our street," he said.

Like the military's M4s and M16s, civilian AR-15s are fed with box magazines - the standard magazine holds 30 rounds, or cartridges - that can be swapped out quickly, allowing a gunman to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes. That is what the police described the Parkland gunman as having done. In many states, civilians can buy magazines that hold many more rounds, including 60- and 100-round versions.

A New York Times analysis of a video from a Florida classroom estimates that during his crime the gunman fired his AR-15 as quickly as one-and-a-half rounds per second. The military trains soldiers to fire at a sustained rate of 12 to 15 rounds per minute, or a round every four or five seconds.

The small-caliber, high-velocity rounds used in the military rifles are identical to those sold for the civilian weapons. They have been documented inflicting grievous bone and soft-tissue wounds. Both civilian and military models of the rifle are lightweight and have very little recoil.

Firearms manufactured in the United States

Pistols

Rifles Includes AR-15 and others

Shotguns

Revolvers

Source: Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report 2017, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Data includes firearms manufactured for export and excludes production for the U.S. military but includes firearms purchased by domestic law enforcement agencies.

A federal ban on the manufacture of certain rifles deemed to be "assault weapons" took effect in 1994, and the list of covered rifles included the AR-15.

Since the ban expired in 2004, the number of rifles manufactured in the United States increased threefold to four million in 2013. That was one year after a gunman killed his mother and then 26 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Sources: U.S. Marine Corps M16/M4 Service Rifle Familiarization; National Rifle Association; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Note: Information on the precise version or year of manufacture of each gun was not always available, so a version of the model or a similar one is shown. In some mass shootings, multiple weapons were used.

John Ismay, Lauren Katzenberg and Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland

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With AR-15s, Mass Shooters Attack With the Rifle Firepower Typically Used by Infantry Troops

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When a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle that allowed him to fire upon people in much the same way that many American soldiers and Marines would fire their M16 and M4 rifles in combat.

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PARKLAND, Fla. - Brooke Harrison, 14, was still in a deep sleep when her mother knocked on her door and hugged her awake at 6:45 Wednesday morning. "You need to get up," she told her daughter. "You don't want to be late for school today."

It was the first day of class for Brooke and her classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School since a mass shooting that killed 17 people and forever upended thousands of lives across this South Florida suburb two weeks ago.

It had been two weeks of nightmares, funerals, flashbacks, vigils and grief counseling since the attack. But Brooke felt ready.

She had watched gunfire explode through her Honors English class that Feb. 14 afternoon as she and her classmates worked on an essay about hardship and education. Three students from her class alone were killed. She had heard their last breaths, crawled through glass and put pressure on a wounded student's torso before escaping through the school parking lot and running as fast as she could to reach her home in a subdivision lined by coconut palms.

Now, like many other Stoneman Douglas students, Brooke just wanted to return to a routine. She wanted to see her friends and reclaim her school, which is ringed by police officers and garlanded by fading memorial flowers.

She was nervous, and she worried she would cry when she walked through the courtyard where she would sometimes eat lunch with Alaina Petty, who was killed in her classroom. Others said they dreaded confronting so many empty seats, or seeing the art project that a slain friend would never finish.

"I just hope she's going to be O.K. being there all day," Brooke's mother, Denise, said as she made coffee, toast and bacon for breakfast. "That it's not traumatic to be there."

But first, Brooke needed her mother to help unknot a pair of gray Nikes.

"I have no strength," she said as she walked into the kitchen, smiling and still wearing the same burgundy Stoneman Douglas shirt from the day before.

The bloodied shoes that Brooke had worn the day of the shooting had been taken away as evidence. Her favorite sweater was also seized. Her black backpack now has a bullet hole in the bottom, from one of the AR-15 rifle rounds that filled her English class with a choking haze and killed Alex Schachter, Alyssa Alhadeff and Alaina before her eyes there in room 1216.

So on Wednesday, Brooke went back to school carrying little more than her phone and a small bracelet made by students that said "ALAINA."

The shortened school day started with fourth period, the class where everything had shattered. For 30 minutes, the students reunited with the classmates and teachers who had huddled with them in closets and corners. They spent 24 minutes in each of their other classes and were done by 11:40 a.m. Robert W. Runcie, the Broward schools superintendent, said about 95 percent of the student body of 3,293 had returned.

There were extra counselors and therapy dogs on hand, and it will be days - if not weeks - before students return to their regular lessons. The school's principal, Ty Thompson, said on Twitter that the focus of the week would be on healing, and classes are being dismissed at 11:40 a.m. for the rest of the week in an effort to let the students acclimate to being back.

"There is no need for backpacks," he wrote. "Come ready to start the healing process and #RECLAIM THE NEST."

Back at home that morning, it was 7:23. Time for Brooke to go.

"Are we ready?" Ms. Harrison asked.

"Yeah."

As they skimmed through the neighborhood in a white Hyundai S.U.V., past driveway basketball hoops, cyclists and joggers, Ms. Harrison remembered how she had driven the same route two weeks earlier to find Brooke after the shooting.

Many parents had exchanged frantic text messages with their children as they hid in their classrooms, but Brooke's class was one of the first to be attacked. When she and her friends poured out of the school, they grabbed cellphones from strangers and broke the news to their parents. Brooke's mother found her shaken near their subdivision.

That day, Brooke and two friends had sat at her house and feverishly tried to confirm which of their friends was safe. They sent group text messages asking who was missing and who had been found. They posted photos on social media. They knew, before any names were officially released or parents were notified, which of their friends were not coming home.

Brooke still flashes back to the shadow of the gunman passing by their classroom door. "I'll just see him," she said. These past two weeks, she found some escape in a high school romance novel and rewatched "101 Dalmatians" and other Disney movies from her childhood.

Her parents tried to calibrate when to hold her close and when to give her space. Ms. Harrison said she would quietly try to check in by calling Brooke to ask if she wanted a drink from Starbucks or needed anything from Target. And when Brooke declined to attend her 12-year-old brother's birthday party, she reminded her mother that she sometimes just needed to be alone.

On Wednesday, traffic around the school slowed to a crawl as Brooke and her mother drew close. They passed heavily armed police officers and television cameras. Students walked through a colonnade of police officers from nearby cities and teachers from their old middle and elementary schools who waved signs of support.

"Welcome back, welcome back," one sheriff's deputy said.

"I feel like I'm on an episode of 'C.S.I.,'" Brooke said.

"How is this our school?" her mother asked. "How is this happening?"

Ms. Harrison's voice trembled. "This is unbelievable. It's making me sad."

"Mom, please don't cry."

They pulled into a circular driveway, near a banner that declared "WELCOME EAGLES" - their school team name. Inside, over the course of this half-day, there would be hugs and joyful reunions laced with sadness and loss. Some students would break down crying as they said the Pledge of Allegiance. Others would wipe away tears when they heard the alma mater. They would compare their memories, nuzzle therapy dogs and share their final text messages from now-absent friends.

"We were just so happy to see each other," Brooke would say.

But not quite yet. Brooke and her mother quickly hugged, kissed and said I love you. And then the 14-year-old freshman who dreams about one day whirling across the globe as a travel journalist hopped out of her mom's car, threaded her way past a sheriff's officer and joined the river of children in burgundy T-shirts making their way back in.

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Scared but Resilient, Stoneman Douglas Students Return to Class

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PARKLAND, Fla. - Brooke Harrison, 14, was still in a deep sleep when her mother knocked on her door and hugged her awake at 6:45 Wednesday morning. "You need to get up," she told her daughter. "You don't want to be late for school today."

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As pressure from social media and advocacy groups has intensified, and calls for boycotts mount, more than a dozen companies have severed business ties with the N.R.A. since the massacre in Parkland, Fla. Just as quickly, a counteroffensive arose from gun supporters excoriating the companies for their stance, forcing business leaders to navigate the treacherous ground where social responsibility, ideology and financial impact converge.

Delta did not respond on Tuesday to Mr. Cagle's threat or amplify its stance regarding the N.R.A. In a statement over the weekend, the company said its decision to stop offering discounted fares to the N.R.A. "reflects the airline's neutral status in the current national debate over gun control amid recent school shootings."

As of Tuesday afternoon, the jet-fuel tax break, while opposed by Mr. Cagle and some other conservative Republicans, had not yet been stripped out of a broader Senate tax bill.

Delta chose to end special discounts, but FedEx took a different approach, one that highlighted the delicate balancing act. In a statement Monday, FedEx said it disagreed with the N.R.A.'s stance on civilian access to assault rifles but would continue to offer discounts of up to 26 percent to the group's members.

"We are very clear that, when we set pricing strategy or look to adjust pricing, it is not based on political positions or points of view," Patrick Fitzgerald, the company's senior vice president, integrated marketing and communications, said in an interview on Tuesday. "But we do have a very clear corporate position in terms of gun safety and school safety."

In Georgia, the debate has been surprisingly fiery, even in a state long defined by tensions between the liberal metropolis and conservative countryside, and between the values of global corporate culture and those of Southern Republicans.

"Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back," Mr. Cagle, a leading G.O.P. candidate for governor, wrote in a tweet Monday, in which he announced that he would "kill any tax legislation" that benefited Delta unless it changed its position.

State Senator Josh McKoon said in an interview Tuesday that he was put off by Delta's assertion that it was trying to remain neutral on the guns issue, when it had taken positions on other social topics in the past.

"It just came off as very disingenuous," Mr. McKoon said of Delta's statement.

Referring to Mr. Cagle's pushback, Mr. McKoon said, "I think he captured the sentiment and the feeling of a lot of Georgians," who, he said, were frustrated "with Delta weighing in on an issue that has nothing to do with the topic of transportation, for sure."

But Mr. Massell, the former mayor who is president of the Buckhead Coalition, an influential Atlanta business and civic group, called the entire debate "embarrassing." He said that he feared the threat against Delta would scare away Amazon, the online retail giant that has listed Atlanta among the finalists for its second headquarters.

"I don't believe in blackmail, and I'm sorry to use such a dirty word, but that's almost what it tastes like," said Mr. Massell, a Democrat who served as mayor from 1970 to 1974. "That's terrible. That's not Georgia's image. That's backwoods stuff that doesn't belong at all."

The story of Delta and the story of Atlanta have been deeply intertwined for decades. The company was founded in Louisiana in the 1920s; it focused, in the earliest days, on crop dusting, in an effort to end the boll weevil infestation that had ruined many Southern cotton crops. The company moved to Atlanta in 1941.

In subsequent decades, the city, which was founded as a railroad hub, invested heavily in its airport, and pushed a message that it was more socially tolerant than other Southern cities like Birmingham. It was a winning combination. Today, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest in the world, and Delta employs more than 33,000 Georgia residents.

Its current problem with the legislature has prompted leaders in other states to woo Delta via Twitter. "You know, in mathematics, Delta represents the change in something," wrote Randall Woodfin, the mayor of Birmingham. He added, "Let's chat."

Michael Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and faculty director of the Center for Social Impact, said in an interview that "Delta has every right to tell legislators, 'We're not of a mind to do your bidding.' They could easily pack their bags and move away from Atlanta and go to Dallas."

But it seemed unlikely that the airline would move. In 2016, the company signed an airport lease with the city that would keep its headquarters in Atlanta through 2036.

"Atlanta and Georgia and the business community usually try to work together and Delta is a huge employer in this state," said another former Atlanta mayor, Shirley Franklin. "So the relationship is damaged, if nothing else."

A broader concern, shared by some liberals, conservatives and members of the Georgia business community, is that gun control may now join other hot-button cultural topics that may damage the state's reputation among national and global corporations that do not adhere to the same conservative Southern values as the state legislature.

In the last few years, the legislature has taken up a number of prominent bills that critics say would allow for discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed one of them, a so-called religious liberty bill, in 2016, after some of the state's most prestigious and powerful companies - including Delta, Home Depot and Coca-Cola - openly opposed the measure.

Mr. Deal, a Republican, will soon leave office because of term limits. Mr. Cagle, a leading candidate to replace him, is among a number of Republican hopefuls who say they will continue to support the legislation, which would have strengthened legal protection for opponents of same-sex marriage.

Mr. McKoon, a Republican who is leaving the upper chamber to run for secretary of state, said that he had long opposed the jet-fuel tax break on the grounds that it seemed like a handout for a politically connected industry.

Mr. McKoon was a vocal supporter of the 2016 religious liberty bill that Mr. Deal vetoed. He said that when that legislation failed, he issued a warning, saying that liberals would continue pressuring companies to embrace progressive social positions.

He warned, he said, that "the next logical step would be to attack gun rights. And I think we are seeing the beginning of that."

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In N.R.A. Fight, Delta Finds There Is No Neutral Ground

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As pressure from social media and advocacy groups has intensified, and calls for boycotts mount, more than a dozen companies have severed business ties with the N.R.A. since the massacre in Parkland, Fla. Just as quickly, a counteroffensive arose from gun supporters excoriating the companies for their stance, forcing business leaders to navigate the treacherous ground where social responsibility, ideology and financial impact converge.

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As I watched President Trump blathering to a group of governors on Monday about throwing people who have not committed a crime into mental hospitals to prevent mass shootings at schools, I recalled a country where I once lived in which the government had that power - the Soviet Union.

From the mid-1960s until the fall of Soviet Communism, the Kremlin employed the notion of "sluggish schizophrenia" - dreamed up by the Mengele-like psychiatrist Andrei Snezhnevsky - to imprison people on the ground that they were on their way to becoming insane.

Rejected by most civilized nations as a transparent fraud, sluggish schizophrenia was used against dissidents and other citizens who simply dared to seek exit visas. When I worked in Moscow as a reporter in the mid-1980s, I knew an Estonian man who was committed twice for refusing to enter the Red Army during the war in Afghanistan, an act of sanity. It was a literal Catch-22.

Now comes Trump, urging the nation's governors to return to a time when he said the states could "nab" people and throw them in a padded room because "something was off."

In fact, the law has required court-ratified findings of actual mental illness for involuntary commitment since around 1881, said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor at Columbia University's medical school. "It was never the case that people could be involuntary committed for being a little odd, or even for that matter thought to be dangerous to other people unless they had evidence of mental illness," he said.

I'm not bringing this up to suggest that Trump is a disciple of Snezhnevsky, despite his bizarre affinity for Kremlin autocracy, or merely to point out that the president was once again making things up. Rather, it is an example of the incoherent, insincere and inadequate ways in which the president and others on the right are suddenly claiming to be dedicated to addressing the nation's epidemic of gun violence.

They are playing a cynical game of misdirection.

It is tragic that in recent decades, states have closed mental hospitals and thrown people into prisons when they should be receiving psychiatric care. But that has little to do with gun violence - in or out of schools, on a small or mass scale.

The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety studied 133 acts of mass murder committed between January 2009 and July 2015 and found that only one of the murderers had been "prohibited by federal law from possessing guns due to severe mental illness." In only 11 percent of the cases did the group find "evidence that concerns about the mental health of the shooter had been brought to the attention of a medical practitioner, school official or legal authority."

Similarly, the president's newfound support for banning bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to be fired nearly as rapidly as automatic ones, is fine, on the surface. But bump stocks could have been banned at any time before or since a killer used them to murder 58 people in Las Vegas last fall, and Trump has done nothing to make it happen.

Some politicians - so far not including Trump or the Republican leadership in Congress - are calling for raising the age to buy a semiautomatic weapon to 21 from 18. (The person charged with the murders in Parkland, Fla., this month was 19.)

There should be such a law, on a national basis and not state by state, but Everytown found that only 5 percent of the mass shooters it studied were under 20. And of course, mass shooting victims account for a tiny percentage of the Americans gunned down every year. A majority of children killed by guns are killed by accident, or by their own hand, or by adults, with weapons legally obtained by adults.

Trump also chimed in on calls from the right to arm more teachers and train them to shoot would-be killers. It's an absurd and dangerous idea. Highly trained police officers frequently miss their targets, even at close range, in the heat of the moment. Having armed civilians at a shooting scene would just make their jobs harder.

The real problem with gun violence is not about mental hospitals, armed teachers, bump stocks or age requirements. The real problem is that there are far too many firearms in America - more than 300 million, according to Congress. They are too easy to obtain and they are becoming ever more lethal.

But the gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has stopped every effort to reduce the number and lethality of firearms, a crusade that seems as much or more about expanding the markets for firearms makers than about constitutional principles.

Banning the possession of semiautomatic weapons by civilians would be a better approach. So would repealing lax concealed-carry laws, stand-your-ground laws and other rules that are proliferating around America to make it easier to shoot someone and get away with it.

The risk is that the passage of a few partial measures will take our eyes off the bigger picture and drain the energy out of the demands for change led by young people after the Parkland slaughter. That is what the gun lobby is counting on.

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As I watched President Trump blathering to a group of governors on Monday about throwing people who have not committed a crime into mental hospitals to prevent mass shootings at schools, I recalled a country where I once lived in which the government had that power - the Soviet Union.

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The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view.

Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself. When you're done, submit it using the contest form below by Thursday, April 5, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to read the rules, also below, before posting.

Our judges will then use this rubric (PDF) for selecting winners to publish on The Learning Network.

As teachers know, the persuasive essay has long been a staple of high school education, but the Common Core standards seem to have put evidence-based argumentative writing on everybody's agenda. You couldn't ask for a more real-world example of the genre than the classic newspaper editorial - and The Times publishes, on average, two of them a day.

And at a time when breaking out of one's "filter bubble" is more important than ever, we hope this contest also encourages students to broaden their news diets by using multiple sources, ideally ones that offer a range of perspectives on their chosen issue.

So what issue do you care about? Gun violence? Sexual harassment? Social media? You decide.

Good luck, and please post any questions you might have in the comments. We'll answer you there.

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Note: The submission form has been removed from this page. The contest is closed.
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To help with this challenge, Andrew Rosenthal, in his previous role as Editorial Page editor of The Times, detailed seven pointers in the video above. And we have published related lesson plans, including " For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials," " I Don't Think So: Writing Effective Counterarguments" and " 10 Ways to Teach Argument-Writing With The New York Times," that offer additional teaching ideas.

We have also culled a list of 401 prompts for argumentative writing organized by category, to help inspire you - although, of course, you are not limited to those topics.

We encourage you to look at both our comments on last year's winners and the winning essays themselves. They can serve as excellent models, and they cover topics from active-shooter school lockdowns to Korean television shows in China.

In addition, you can watch our free, archived webinar, featuring the Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof and Kabby Hong, a high school English teacher.

Rules

1. Use at least one Times source. You can write your editorial about any topic, as long as you use at least one source from The Times. That should pretty much open the whole world to you, as you may be surprised how much you can find in The Times.

Be advised that nytimes.com has a digital subscription system in which readers have access to five free articles each month, but after that you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. The Times also offers K-12 digital subscription plans for schools. But all Learning Network activities for students, including our daily writing prompts, as well as Times articles linked from them, are free, so you can access them without exceeding the five-article limit.

2. Use at least one non-Times source. But make sure that the source you use is a reliable one. We encourage you to find sources that offer different perspectives on an issue.

3. Always cite your sources. Our submission form contains a required field for entering your citations. We include an example as well, though you can use M.L.A. or A.P.A. styles, or just list the website URLs. Even if you use a print source or an expert interview, you must provide a citation. Readers (and judges) should always know where you got your evidence.

4. Be concise. The editorial must not exceed 450 words. Your title and list of sources are separate, however, and do not count as part of your 450-word limit.

5. Have an opinion. Editorials are different from news articles because they try to persuade readers to share your point of view. Don't be afraid to take a stand.

6. Write your editorial by yourself or with a group. If you are working as a team, just remember to submit all of your names when you post your entry. But please submit only one editorial per student. If you're submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.

7. Be original and use appropriate language. Write for a well-informed audience, but include enough background information to give context. Be careful not to plagiarize: Use quotation marks around lines you take verbatim from another source, or rephrase and cite your source.

8. Submissions must be from students who are 13 to 19 years old, and they may come from anywhere in the world. Unlike in previous years, students can now use their entire name if they want.

9. All entries must be submitted by April 5 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern using the contest form above. If you have questions about the contest, feel free to post them in the comments section, and we'll respond to you there.

10. Follow these instructions if you need proof that you entered this contest. Within an hour of submitting your editorial, you should receive an email from "The New York Times" with the subject heading "Thank you for your submission to our Student Editorial Contest." If you don't receive the email within an hour, even after checking your spam folder, then you can resubmit your entry. Be sure your settings allow emails from nytimes.com.

After two attempts and waiting over one full day, if you still have not received a confirmation email, you can contact us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com with the email address you used in the contest form. Use the subject heading "Please send me an email confirmation for my editorial contest submission." Be sure to include your name and editorial title (or subject) in your email. You may have to wait up to a week for a reply.

11. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries, and the winning editorials will be featured on The Learning Network.

Resources Suggested by Teachers

" Writing an Editorial" Unit Plan, by Lindsay Thompson

" Reader Idea | He Said, She Said, I Say: A Researched Argument Essay," by Danielle Harms

" Reader Idea | Using an Op-Doc Video to Teach Argumentative Writing," by Allison Marchetti

" Reader Idea | Using Room for Debate to Teach Argumentative Writing and Discussion Skills," by Gerard Dawson and Justin Rex

" Reader Idea | An Argument-Writing Unit: Crafting Student Editorials," by Kayleen Everitt

Good luck and have fun. We welcome your questions and comments if we have omitted details that might be useful. Let us know how we can help.

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The Learning Network runs contests for teenagers all year long. See our full calendar.

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Our Fifth Annual Student Editorial Contest: Write About an Issue That Matters to You

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The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view. Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself.

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When students return Wednesday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they will start where they left off: fourth period.

A guidance counselor was explaining this the other day to Bruna Oliveira. That's when the freshman felt the grief well up, her mind floating back to when she was crouched on the classroom floor, praying she would be spared, eyes squeezed shut while her favorite teacher lay wounded.

"My teacher is dead," Bruna told the counselor at a Sunday orientation. "And I don't have a class."

Exactly two weeks after gunfire transformed this tranquil, suburban community into the latest chapter in the American school-shooting saga, students are set to return to the sprawling campus. The massacre that left 17 dead put the campus at the center of a debate over gun violence and many of its students at the forefront of a movement to change firearms laws.

But in the coming weeks, teachers hope to ease students back into the business of learning: graphing polynomials, dissecting Shakespeare, learning the countries of Southeast Asia. For Bruna, that should mean starting with geography class, but her teacher, Scott Beigel, is gone. And Building 12 - which held his classroom - is ringed by a chain-link fence. The Broward County school system is seeking money from the state to demolish the building, to wipe the stain away.

Some students are too traumatized to return and instead plan to transfer schools or continue their education online, from the safety of their homes.

But for those who witnessed the violence and plan to return, heading back is an act of defiance. Some sense danger at random times, even at homes protected by alarm systems and secluded deep within gated communities. Sometimes a sound - the shrill ring of the house phone, for instance - transports them to that terrifying day, and they find themselves shaking. Their challenge is how to carry on - how to absorb lessons about math and science and history - when their teenage brains harbor memories of gunfire and broken glass and the bloodied bodies of friends and teachers.

"I know that I'll never forget what happened, and I know that I'm never going to be the same," said Bruna, who moved to Parkland with her mother from Brazil in 2016. She is a hard-working student and worries her grades will slip. "But I'm trying to make everything like it was before."

Guilt, confusion, anger

Bruna and the 3,300 students of Stoneman Douglas High join a growing roster of people who have survived school shootings, many grappling with injuries or the effects of trauma for the rest of their lives. For the survivors of Building 12, the hulking, three-story building where police say a former classmate decided to open fire on about 550 students, the memories are especially vivid.

An ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a campus shooting since the 1999 Columbine High massacre. And research has shown that standardized test scores fall among students who remain at schools where there has been a fatal shooting.

Mixed in with the grief is guilt, confusion, anger. The students who have dominated the news cycle say they speak on behalf of classmates too traumatized or fragile to speak, teens who spend their days in group counseling.

The start of school has been accompanied by the return of familiar routines punctuated by reminders of this transformative event. On Saturday, Sarah Lezama, a senior who now sleeps alongside her mother and needs Benadryl to nod off, went shopping for a prom dress. Then, she changed out of her cutoff denim shorts and into a black dress with tiny white flowers to head to the visitation for 14-year-old Martin Duque, the last of the Parkland 17 to be laid to rest. Ryan Gutierrez, a senior, attended Martin's funeral Sunday morning, then swapped black slacks for a soccer uniform in his mother's car to play midfield.

It's a combination of resignation - a feeling that what happened in a city hailed as Florida's safest could happen anywhere - and defiance. Those returning to Stoneman Douglas said leaving would feel like betrayal and a surrendering to the fear that the alleged gunman, Nikolas Cruz, perhaps sought to create.

The parents of Alexandra Geisser, a 16-year-old sophomore, got her into a private school after the shooting. But Alexandra, who spent an hour crammed behind a teacher's desk while bullets flew down the hallway, said she is not quite ready to leave. Like many of her classmates, she startles easily, and when she attended a CNN town hall on gun control, she found herself crouching down to the floor when she heard a rumble.

"Logically, I know I should go" to the private school, Alexandra said as she cuddled a therapy dog near the school's entrance Sunday after she collected a backpack left behind when police rescued her from a classroom. "But there's this guilt, this feeling of solidarity. I feel like I'd be betraying the community."

Joseph DiGilio, a 15-year-old sophomore, said he sometimes wakes up in a panic - "I feel like my gut is twisted" - even though there is little to fear in his home.

He wrestles with guilt and helplessness over his inability to help a classmate who lay wounded in the hallway as Joseph hid in a locked classroom. Without warning, he will be seized with fear and terror.

Joseph has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, the same condition that afflicts soldiers on the front lines of war, and survivor's guilt. But there was no question he would return to school. He thought of how the gunman had already stolen so much from him and his classmates.

"If I didn't come back," Joseph said, "it was letting him win."

'I'm so happy you're alive'

Isaah Jean, a 14-year-old freshman who came face to face with the gunman and broke his foot sprinting from Building 12, said he is unsure how he will focus. Hobbling around on crutches, he stares at the ground, with obvious sadness in his face.

"I'm trying to pay attention, but in the back of my mind, anything could happen," he said. On his first visit back to campus, he grew uneasy: "Something in my mind was telling me to keep moving, to not stay in one place for too long."

There are students, too, who have found a sense of purpose. Suzanna Barna, a senior who was in the high school newspaper class when the shooting happened, planned to go to school for engineering because she excels in physics. But Suzanna, who is helping assemble a memorial edition of the student newspaper and who traveled to the state capitol in Tallahassee to speak to lawmakers about gun control, is reconsidering her aspirations, weighing journalism or politics.

Teachers and staff returned to the school last week to prepare it for students, but some were too fearful to enter their classrooms, and one showed up with a deep-purple bruise marking where a bullet had slid past her shoulder. One teacher has asked for a therapy dog to be permanently stationed in her room.

Bruna's first visit to the shattered campus, like many of her classmates, came Sunday, when students returned for an orientation and some retrieved belongings - backpacks, gym bags, Valentine's Day presents with wilted flowers - abandoned in the rush to escape. Principal Ty Thompson offered a hug to every student, and therapy dogs - friendly golden retrievers - hovered outside the campus entrance.

Students were greeted by well-wishers clad in angel costumes and handing out white carnations, and they passed the homegrown memorials lining an entire side of the campus. One girl embraced another on the sidewalk: "I'm so happy you're alive."

Bruna's mother, Alessandra Oliveira, who cries whenever her daughter stoicly recounts that day, offered to drive her to school Wednesday. Bruna instead will ride the early-morning school bus.

"I just want to go back to normal," she said. "I'm not scared."

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'I'm never going to be the same': Students set to return to shattered Florida school

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When students return Wednesday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they will start where they left off: fourth period. A guidance counselor was explaining this the other day to Bruna Oliveira. That's when the freshman felt the grief well up, her mind floating back to when she was crouched on the classroom floor, praying she would be spared, eyes squeezed shut while her favorite teacher lay wounded.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When students return Wednesday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they will start where they left off: fourth period.

A guidance counselor was explaining this the other day to Bruna Oliveira. That's when the freshman felt the grief well up, her mind floating back to when she was crouched on the classroom floor, praying she would be spared, eyes squeezed shut while her favorite teacher lay wounded.

"My teacher is dead," Bruna told the counselor at a Sunday orientation. "And I don't have a class."

Exactly two weeks after gunfire transformed this tranquil, suburban community into the latest chapter in the American school-shooting saga, students are set to return to the sprawling campus. The massacre that left 17 dead put the campus at the center of a debate over gun violence and many of its students at the forefront of a movement to change firearms laws.

But in the coming weeks, teachers hope to ease students back into the business of learning: graphing polynomials, dissecting Shakespeare, learning the countries of Southeast Asia. For Bruna, that should mean starting with geography class, but her teacher, Scott Beigel, is gone. And Building 12 - which held his classroom - is ringed by a chain-link fence. The Broward County school system is seeking money from the state to demolish the building, to wipe the stain away.

Some students are too traumatized to return and instead plan to transfer schools or continue their education online, from the safety of their homes.

But for those who witnessed the violence and plan to return, heading back is an act of defiance. Some sense danger at random times, even at homes protected by alarm systems and secluded deep within gated communities. Sometimes a sound - the shrill ring of the house phone, for instance - transports them to that terrifying day, and they find themselves shaking. Their challenge is how to carry on - how to absorb lessons about math and science and history - when their teenage brains harbor memories of gunfire and broken glass and the bloodied bodies of friends and teachers.

"I know that I'll never forget what happened, and I know that I'm never going to be the same," said Bruna, who moved to Parkland with her mother from Brazil in 2016. She is a hard-working student and worries her grades will slip. "But I'm trying to make everything like it was before."

Guilt, confusion, anger

Bruna and the 3,300 students of Stoneman Douglas High join a growing roster of people who have survived school shootings, many grappling with injuries or the effects of trauma for the rest of their lives. For the survivors of Building 12, the hulking, three-story building where police say a former classmate decided to open fire on about 550 students, the memories are especially vivid.

An ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a campus shooting since the 1999 Columbine High massacre. And research has shown that standardized test scores fall among students who remain at schools where there has been a fatal shooting.

Mixed in with the grief is guilt, confusion, anger. The students who have dominated the news cycle say they speak on behalf of classmates too traumatized or fragile to speak, teens who spend their days in group counseling.

The start of school has been accompanied by the return of familiar routines punctuated by reminders of this transformative event. On Saturday, Sarah Lezama, a senior who now sleeps alongside her mother and needs Benadryl to nod off, went shopping for a prom dress. Then, she changed out of her cutoff denim shorts and into a black dress with tiny white flowers to head to the visitation for 14-year-old Martin Duque, the last of the Parkland 17 to be laid to rest. Ryan Gutierrez, a senior, attended Martin's funeral Sunday morning, then swapped black slacks for a soccer uniform in his mother's car to play midfield.

It's a combination of resignation - a feeling that what happened in a city hailed as Florida's safest could happen anywhere - and defiance. Those returning to Stoneman Douglas said leaving would feel like betrayal and a surrendering to the fear that the alleged gunman, Nikolas Cruz, perhaps sought to create.

The parents of Alexandra Geisser, a 16-year-old sophomore, got her into a private school after the shooting. But Alexandra, who spent an hour crammed behind a teacher's desk while bullets flew down the hallway, said she is not quite ready to leave. Like many of her classmates, she startles easily, and when she attended a CNN town hall on gun control, she found herself crouching down to the floor when she heard a rumble.

"Logically, I know I should go" to the private school, Alexandra said as she cuddled a therapy dog near the school's entrance Sunday after she collected a backpack left behind when police rescued her from a classroom. "But there's this guilt, this feeling of solidarity. I feel like I'd be betraying the community."

Joseph DiGilio, a 15-year-old sophomore, said he sometimes wakes up in a panic - "I feel like my gut is twisted" - even though there is little to fear in his home.

He wrestles with guilt and helplessness over his inability to help a classmate who lay wounded in the hallway as Joseph hid in a locked classroom. Without warning, he will be seized with fear and terror.

Joseph has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, the same condition that afflicts soldiers on the front lines of war, and survivor's guilt. But there was no question he would return to school. He thought of how the gunman had already stolen so much from him and his classmates.

"If I didn't come back," Joseph said, "it was letting him win."

'I'm so happy you're alive'

Isaah Jean, a 14-year-old freshman who came face to face with the gunman and broke his foot sprinting from Building 12, said he is unsure how he will focus. Hobbling around on crutches, he stares at the ground, with obvious sadness in his face.

"I'm trying to pay attention, but in the back of my mind, anything could happen," he said. On his first visit back to campus, he grew uneasy: "Something in my mind was telling me to keep moving, to not stay in one place for too long."

There are students, too, who have found a sense of purpose. Suzanna Barna, a senior who was in the high school newspaper class when the shooting happened, planned to go to school for engineering because she excels in physics. But Suzanna, who is helping assemble a memorial edition of the student newspaper and who traveled to the state capitol in Tallahassee to speak to lawmakers about gun control, is reconsidering her aspirations, weighing journalism or politics.

Teachers and staff returned to the school last week to prepare it for students, but some were too fearful to enter their classrooms, and one showed up with a deep-purple bruise marking where a bullet had slid past her shoulder. One teacher has asked for a therapy dog to be permanently stationed in her room.

Bruna's first visit to the shattered campus, like many of her classmates, came Sunday, when students returned for an orientation and some retrieved belongings - backpacks, gym bags, Valentine's Day presents with wilted flowers - abandoned in the rush to escape. Principal Ty Thompson offered a hug to every student, and therapy dogs - friendly golden retrievers - hovered outside the campus entrance.

Students were greeted by well-wishers clad in angel costumes and handing out white carnations, and they passed the homegrown memorials lining an entire side of the campus. One girl embraced another on the sidewalk: "I'm so happy you're alive."

Bruna's mother, Alessandra Oliveira, who cries whenever her daughter stoicly recounts that day, offered to drive her to school Wednesday. Bruna instead will ride the early-morning school bus.

"I just want to go back to normal," she said. "I'm not scared."

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'I'm never going to be the same': Students set to return to shattered Florida school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When students return Wednesday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they will start where they left off: fourth period. A guidance counselor was explaining this the other day to Bruna Oliveira. That's when the freshman felt the grief well up, her mind floating back to when she was crouched on the classroom floor, praying she would be spared, eyes squeezed shut while her favorite teacher lay wounded.

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In this article, it informs readers that major stores that sell guns are changing the age that someone can purchase a gun. Like the age of using alcohol, the age of purchasing a gun at stores like Dick's Sporting Goods are changing the age of purchasing a weapon to 21 years of age. The recent events of teenagers being killed at school shootings had influenced these gun retailers to make a change. Also this was not the first time a change like this has occurred at these stores. Perhaps this could lead to even more places changing their rules and regulations to prevent a tragic event like a school shooting from happening again.

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"When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset," Mr. Stack said in an interview Tuesday evening. "We love these kids and their rallying cry, 'enough is enough.' It got to us."

He added, "We're going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation."

Mr. Stack said he hoped that conversation would include politicians. As part of its stance, Dick's is calling on elected officials to enact what it called "common sense gun reform'' by passing laws to raise the minimum age to purchase guns to 21, to ban assault-type weapons and so-called bump stocks, and to conduct broader universal background checks that include mental-health information and previous interactions with law enforcement.

Mr. Stack said the retailer began scouring its purchase records shortly after the identity of the suspected Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, became known. The company soon discovered it had legally sold a gun to Mr. Cruz in November, though it was not the gun or type of gun used in the school shooting.

"But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story,'' he said. "We said, 'We don't want to be a part of this any longer,'" said Mr. Stack.

That decision raised rounds of discussions with top executives inside the company as well as the directors, all of whom backed the decision to take a stance, said Mr. Stack.

As of Wednesday morning, the company said all AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles would be removed from its stores and websites.

Mr. Stack said Dick's remained a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and will continue to sell a variety of sport and hunting firearms. Although he has never been a member of the N.R.A., Mr. Stack said he is, in fact, a gun owner and enjoys trapshooting clay targets.

But when it comes to selling guns to individuals under 21 years of age or stocking assault-style rifles, Mr. Stack said his company was done. "We don't want to be a part of a mass shooting," he said.

This is not the first time Dick's has made changes in response to a school massacre. In 2012, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Dick's removed assault-style rifles from its main retail stores. But a few months later, the company began carrying the firearms at its outdoor and hunting retail chain, Field & Stream.

This time, Mr. Stack said, the changes will be permanent.

Dick's planned to inform its employees of the new policy in an internal note Wednesday morning, shortly after Mr. Stack appeared on "Good Morning America" to discuss the decision.

Dick's is not the first retailer to stop selling the semiautomatic guns. In 2015, Walmart said that it would no longer sell high-powered rifles in its stores in the United States. But Walmart sidestepped any controversy involving gun politics, attributing its decision to lower customer demand for the military-style rifles.

It is unclear what financial impact the decision will have on Dick's business. Neither Dick's nor its competitor, Cabela's, now owned by Bass Pro Shops, have broken out firearm sales in their financial reports. But last August, Dick's shares plummeted after it said weak results from its hunting segment resulted in its missing Wall Street's second-quarter earnings estimates.

Over all, firearm sales for retailers and gun manufacturers have slumped since Donald J. Trump was elected president, as fears of stricter gun regulation receded. Firearm sales data for the United States is not readily available, but background checks tumbled more than 8 percent last year, the largest fall since the F.B.I. began keeping track in 1998.

Mr. Stack said he and his company expected there would be mixed response - including fallout - to its new policy.

"The whole hunting business is an important part of our business, and we know there is going to be backlash on this," said Mr. Stack. "But we're willing to accept that."

He added, "If the kids in Parkland are being brave enough to stand up and do this, we can be brave enough to stand up with them."

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Dick's, Major Gun Retailer, Will Stop Selling Assault-Style Rifles

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"When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset," Mr. Stack said in an interview Tuesday evening. "We love these kids and their rallying cry, 'enough is enough.' It got to us." He added, "We're going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation."

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TAMPA, Fla. - Russell Wilson looked very much at home in pinstripes Monday, when he suited up to take batting practice and ground balls with the Yankees.

Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback and former minor league baseball player, whose rights were acquired by the Yankees during the off-season, smoothly fielded grounders at second base and did not look out of place while taking swings in a group with the Yankees' biggest sluggers: Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Gary Sanchez and Greg Bird.

Wilson muscled six balls over the wall with his 33 ½-inch, 31-ounce Russell Wilson-model bat - including on a last-pitch situational drill: two outs, bottom of the ninth.

"I think he's been out here early taking swings, because he took a couple out to left, and he took one out to center," Judge said. "I think he's been practicing."

Wilson, though, insisted the only work he had done was some soft-toss drills over the weekend.

"I've been doing it my whole life ever since I was 2, 3, 4 years old," said Wilson, who participated in spring training drills in 2013 and 2014 with the Texas Rangers, the team that previously held his rights. "This is what I know. This is what I've known my whole life. Now, I couldn't just go step on the basketball court. But baseball - it's like riding a bike."

Wilson plans to spend the week working out with the Yankees, but will not play in any exhibition games for fear of injury - though he is not prohibited from doing so by the Seahawks.

If Wilson moved easily among the Yankees on Monday - he also addressed the team in a meeting - there are a number of Yankees who have enough football bona fides to find some common ground. Infielder Jace Peterson was a free safety at McNeese State, and the third-base coach Phil Nevin was a freshman all-American at Cal State Fullerton.

Then there were others who could have played in college: Pitcher C. C. Sabathia signed a letter of intent to play tight end at Hawaii; Jacoby Ellsbury, who returned six kickoffs for touchdowns in high school, was recruited by Oregon; and Sonny Gray was an accomplished quarterback growing up in Tennessee, where he had several scholarship offers before sticking with baseball at Vanderbilt.

But the two Yankees who most likely had the best chance to forge a career in football are the two who look the part - Stanton and Judge. Stanton is 6 feet 6 inches, 245 pounds, and Judge is 6-foot-7, 282 pounds. Both were star receivers in high school - coincidentally, each wore No. 2 - before dropping football in favor of a baseball career.

"They'd definitely be tight ends," Wilson said.

"We have a running joke, me and Jimmy Graham, how he looks like Aaron Judge and how Judge looks like him," Wilson added, referring to Seattle's five-time Pro Bowl tight end. "I was telling Aaron earlier, Jimmy, I think, wore his jersey for Halloween."

While Stanton was an elite baseball prospect at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calif., he did not catch the eye of college football recruiters until his senior season - when in the season opener he caught a touchdown pass and scored on the ensuing 2-point conversion to win the game, leaping above a defender for both balls.

Stanton took a recruiting visit to Southern California, attending a football game and having lunch over the weekend with Pete Carroll, then the U.S.C. football coach and now Wilson's coach with the Seahawks. Carroll also came to watch Stanton play basketball.

"Mike was an excellent prospect in high school, and we knew he had a ton of potential," Carroll said via email through a team spokesman. "We truly saw him as a multisport athlete, which is rare at that level. He was so good at both sports that we would have wanted him to play both if he came to 'SC.'"

In his two years at Notre Dame - he transferred to the private school after spending two years at Verdugo Hills, a public school - Stanton played with at least 10 others who earned college scholarships. One of Stanton's more memorable matchups came against one of Wilson's teammates - the loquacious Richard Sherman.

What did Stanton remember about it?

"I just remember them kicking our butts," said Stanton, whose team had its 35-game winning streak ended by Sherman's Dominguez High School in a 41-14 route in the CIF-Southern Section Division III championship game. "They wore us down."

"They were talking crap, but I didn't put it to just Sherman," added Stanton, who was sometimes matched up against Sherman. "They were all talking stuff because they were the inner-city school and we were the privileged school. I went to public school, too, so I know what they were feeling."

Brandon Huffman, the national recruiting editor for 24/7 Sports, recalled how fast and fluid Stanton looked. "It was like he glided downfield," Huffman said. "It didn't look like he was that fast, but he had long strides. It was like watching a center fielder who knows how much ground he has to cover."

Judge, like Stanton, was a three-sport standout, playing football, basketball and baseball in Linden, Calif., a Central Valley farming community just east of Stockton.

While Judge received recruiting interest from Notre Dame, Washington and U.C.L.A., he made it clear to most schools that he was interested in playing only baseball. A few, such as Eastern Michigan and Portland State, offered to let him play both, but Judge thought playing two sports - along with the academic challenges of college - would be too much, so he focused on baseball at Fresno State.

"I thought if I could find a place where I could just play baseball, that would be great," he said.

Further dampening the idea of playing football was the fact that he might not have played receiver. Judge, who was a Cal fan - in part because his older brother John went to school there - attended a football camp in Berkeley before his senior season.

"They knew I enjoyed football, but that I had baseball on the mind," Judge said. "The receiver coach said, 'I like you, but we'll bulk you up and put you at tight end, to be honest.'"

If that idea did not appeal to Judge at the time, he did not seem put off that Wilson viewed him as a tight end, figuring that Wilson would make him look good with a few passes.

Wilson did not have a football with him, but said he would by the end of the week. Just as he is showing off what he might do with a baseball bat in his hands, Judge and Stanton might be able to show what they can do with a football in theirs.

"You might catch us out on a backfield running some routes," Judge said with a smile.

INSIDE PITCH

Outfielder Clint Frazier was found to have a concussion. He had complained of fogginess and a headache after crashing into the outfield wall twice in Saturday's game against Pittsburgh. Frazier said Monday that he felt fine and would ride a stationary bike on Tuesday to determine if exercise would cause the symptoms to return.

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Russell Wilson Sizes Up the Yankees' Football Prospects

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TAMPA, Fla. - Russell Wilson looked very much at home in pinstripes Monday, when he suited up to take batting practice and ground balls with the Yankees.

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When a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle that allowed him to fire upon people in much the same way that many American soldiers and Marines would fire their M16 and M4 rifles in combat.

A Marine shooting a standard rifle used by the military.

The gunman firing a civilian variant during the Parkland shooting.
( This video is graphic.)

C.J. Chivers is a reporter for The New York Times, a former Marine infantry officer and the author of "The Gun," a history of assault rifles and their effects upon security and war.

Since 2007, at least 173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s, according to a New York Times analysis. The grim list includes crimes in Newtown, Conn.; Las Vegas; San Bernardino, Calif.; and now Parkland, Fla.

The main functional difference between the military's M16 and M4 rifles and a civilian AR-15 is the "burst" mode on many military models, which allow three rounds to be fired with one trigger pull. Some military versions of the rifles have a full automatic feature, which fires until the trigger is released or a magazine is empty of ammunition.

But in actual American combat these technical differences are less significant than they seem. For decades the American military has trained its conventional troops to fire their M4s and M16s in the semiautomatic mode - one bullet per trigger pull - instead of on "burst" or automatic in almost all shooting situations. The weapons are more accurate this way, and thus more lethal.

The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups highlight the fully automatic feature in military M4s and M16s. But the American military, after a long experience with fully automatic M16s reaching back to Vietnam, decided by the 1980s to issue M16s, and later M4s, to most conventional troops without the fully automatic function, and to train them to fire in a more controlled fashion.

What all of this means is that the Parkland gunman, in practical terms, had the same rifle firepower as an American grunt using a standard infantry rifle in the standard way.

Representative Brian Mast of Florida, a Republican and an Army combat veteran, has called for a ban on the sale of AR-15-style rifles.

"The exact definition of assault weapon will need to be determined," Mr. Mast said. "But we should all be able to agree that the civilian version of the very deadly weapon that the Army issued to me should certainly qualify."

Joe Plenzler, a 20-year combat veteran of the Marine Corps, is part of a social media movement of military veterans, including those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, calling for reforms on the sale or possession of modern military-style firearms.

"They are the Formula One cars of guns, designed to kill as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible," Mr. Plenzler said, referring to AR-15-style rifles. "We are seeing battlefield-level casualties because we are allowing those weapons on our street," he said.

Like the military's M4s and M16s, civilian AR-15s are fed with box magazines - the standard magazine holds 30 rounds, or cartridges - that can be swapped out quickly, allowing a gunman to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes. That is what the police described the Parkland gunman as having done. In many states, civilians can buy magazines that hold many more rounds, including 60- and 100-round versions.

A New York Times analysis of a video from a Florida classroom estimates that during his crime the gunman fired his AR-15 as quickly as one-and-a-half rounds per second. The military trains soldiers to fire at a sustained rate of 12 to 15 rounds per minute, or a round every four or five seconds.

The small-caliber, high-velocity rounds used in the military rifles are identical to those sold for the civilian weapons. They have been documented inflicting grievous bone and soft-tissue wounds. Both civilian and military models of the rifle are lightweight and have very little recoil.

Firearms manufactured in the United States

Pistols

Rifles Includes AR-15 and others

Shotguns

Revolvers

Source: Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report 2017, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Data includes firearms manufactured for export and excludes production for the U.S. military but includes firearms purchased by domestic law enforcement agencies.

A federal ban on the manufacture of certain rifles deemed to be "assault weapons" took effect in 1994, and the list of covered rifles included the AR-15.

Since the ban expired in 2004, the number of rifles manufactured in the United States increased threefold to four million in 2013. That was one year after a gunman killed his mother and then 26 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Sources: U.S. Marine Corps M16/M4 Service Rifle Familiarization; National Rifle Association; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Note: Information on the precise version or year of manufacture of each gun was not always available, so a version of the model or a similar one is shown. In some mass shootings, multiple weapons were used.

John Ismay, Lauren Katzenberg and Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland

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With AR-15s, Mass Shooters Attack With the Rifle Firepower Typically Used by Infantry Troops

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When a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle that allowed him to fire upon people in much the same way that many American soldiers and Marines would fire their M16 and M4 rifles in combat.