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On February 14, 2018, expelled student Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students with his legally bought AR-15. Along with the deaths, he also injured 17 other students. Whats worse is that all of this damage was done in a matter of 7 minutes. After these 7 minutes, he tried to escape by blending in with the students. This all went to plan until he was arrested by officer Micheal Leonard while heading to McDonalds.

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On February 14, 2018, an expelled student entered Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others, in what became at the time the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States history.

Dressed in a maroon shirt adorned with the school logo, Nikolas Cruz exited his Uber outside the campus at 2:19 p.m. He approached the school wearing a backpack filled with magazines and carrying a black duffel packed with his legally purchased AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

School staff had been warned after Cruz's expulsion for "disciplinary reasons" in 2017 that the troubled teen was a risk to student safety. When a staff member saw him outside, he hesitated to call a " Code Red." The gunman was halfway through his six-minute rampage before anyone issued a warning. By then, it was too late.

Cruz entered the high school's Freshman Building, on campus-which was mostly filled with freshman students-at 2:21 p.m. and unpacked his rifle in a stairwell. According to NBC Miami, freshman Chris McKenna, 15, spotted Cruz there and received a chilling warning from the gunman. "You better get out of here. Things are going to start getting messy." McKenna ran outside, where he spotted Aaron Feis, a coach and school security monitor who took him to the baseball field 500 feet away and turned back to "check it out."

Cruz exited the stairwell into a first-floor hallway, firing a stream of bullets down the corridor, shattering windows and shooting through doors. In just under two minutes, he murdered 11 people and injured 13 others. He then headed up the stairs. He was on the second floor for less than a minute, firing but hitting no one, before going to the third floor where he killed his last six victims, and injured four more in the final 45 seconds of the attack.

Terrified students ran for their lives. Others remained holed up, hiding in classrooms, closets and bathrooms, desperate to reach their parents. Many began broadcasting the horror on social media through video and live posts.

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Cruz left the hallways and went to the faculty lounge, where he set up a bipod-like a tripod on which to rest the gun-reloaded his weapon and began firing, like a sniper, at the fleeing students outside. Only hurricane impact-resistant glass in the windows kept the death toll from growing.

In all, Cruz's attack lasted less than four minutes and left 17 dead. At 2:28 p.m., just seven minutes after entering the building, he ditched the rifle in another stairwell and left the school, attempting to blend in with the crowd of escaping students. The gunman successfully left the campus, running to a Walmart at 2:50 p.m, stopping at a Subway restaurant to get a drink and eventually heading to McDonalds. He was apprehended shortly thereafter after being spotted by a Broward County police officer.

"He looked like a typical high school student, and for a quick moment I thought, 'Could this be the person who I need to stop?'" said Officer Michael Leonard in an interview after arresting Cruz.

Broward Sheriff's deputy school resource officer Scot Peterson, who was assigned to the school that day, would later be accused of retreating during the shooting while victims were still under attack. Peterson was arrested in June 2019 and faced charges of neglect of a child, culpable negligence and perjury.

The devastation felt by the Florida community-once considered the safest city in the state -was immeasurable. Previous school shootings throughout the country had prompted Stoneman Douglas (and other schools) to practice active shooter drills, and the school had employed an armed officer on campus. But it hadn't been enough to stop the carnage. Chants for "No More Guns!" broke out at candlelight vigils and over a thousand people showed up to funerals in the days after.

Student survivors took to social media to make their anger known, giving interviews and becoming activists for gun safety legislation. One student, David Hogg, went from school newspaper reporter to activist when his plea to legislators in a CNN interview went viral.

" Please, take action," he begged lawmakers.

Just days after the shooting, several Marjory Stoneman Douglas students formed Never Again MSD, an anti-gun violence organization and political action committee. On March 24, these and other students helped organize the March for Our Lives, a demonstration in support of gun violence prevention. Students across the country were encouraged to stage walkouts, and a rally was held in Washington, D.C. There, advocates from around the country-some survivors of school shootings, and others whose daily lives were affected by gun violence-spoke to a crowd of thousands, demanding legislative change.

Three weeks later, Florida Governor Rick Scott, a supporter of the NRA, responded. He signed a bill imposing a 21-year-old legal age requirement for gun purchases and a three-day waiting period on all gun transactions. The law also controversially permitted the arming of some school employees. It was the first time in 30 years Florida had passed any gun control measures, though many felt the legislation did not go far enough.

During the summer and fall of 2018, Never Again MSD traveled throughout the country on a bus tour advocating for gun control and voter registration. The group visited 30 states and registered some 50,000 voters.

Nikolas Cruz was charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. He later pleaded guilty to all charges.

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Teen gunman kills 17, injures 17 at Parkland, Florida high school

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On February 14, 2018, an expelled student entered Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 17

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The day after the shooting, parents and students gathered around demanding stricter laws against firearms. This was a harmful protest in the fact that it stayed peaceful throughout the whole thing. I can not imagine how emotional the parents of the deceased kids were.

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PARKLAND, Florida - Anger boiled over among parents and students in Parkland, Florida, on Friday over America's unwillingness to toughen gun control laws, after a disturbed teenager armed with an assault rifle murdered 17 at the local high school.

With US President Donald Trump planning to visit bereaved families in the shocked southern community as early as Friday, a groundswell arose for a new push to restrict the availability of guns and better protect schools.

Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa died in Wednesday's shooting, and who made a powerfully emotional appeal to Trump the following day, addressing a television camera with tears rolling down her face.

"We need action! action! action!" Alhadeff urged in an interview with CNN on Friday, addressing the US leader as the father of an 11-year-old son of his own.

"President Trump, Barron goes to school," she said. "Let's protect Barron, and let's also protect all these other kids here in Parkland, in Florida, and everyone everywhere else in the United States of America," she said.

"My child is dead. I can't help her. But I can help all those other kids at Stoneman Douglas High School. We have to protect our children."

Police timeline shows the gunman carried out the deadliest school shooting in Florida history in about seven minutes. One of the victims who will be buried today is 14 year-old Alyssa Alhadeff. Her mother,Lori, had an emotional message for president Trump yesterday: pic.twitter.com/YbxPAotwec

- CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 16, 2018

Carly Novell, a senior at the school who survived the shooting, said it was time for politicians to act.

"I just want people to stop, like, talking about it and then not doing anything. People keep, like, saying your thoughts and prayers and all of these things, but it doesn't make a difference if nothing ever changes."

The 19-year-old murderer excelled in an air-rifle marksmanship program supported by a grant from the National Rifle Association Foundation. It was part of a multi-million dollar effort by the pro-gun group to support youth shooting clubs.

Nikolas Cruz was wearing a shirt with the logo of the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program when he was arrested. Former cadets told The Associated Press that Cruz was on the varsity marksmanship team that competed against other area schools.

The cadets used air rifles special-made for target shooting. The JROTC program at Cruz's school received $10,827 in non-cash assistance from the NRA's foundation while he was there.

NRA declined to comment. The foundation gave nearly $2.2 million to schools in 2016.

Cruz was filmed by a neighbor practicing his shooting months before Wednesday's deadly attack.

Disturbing video has surfaced of Parkland,Florida suspect Nikolas Cruz shooting target practice in a backyard. This video was filmed by a neighbor a few months before the deadly school shooting. https://t.co/CEEcWUKX6P pic.twitter.com/xFWPeF46Bp

- ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) February 16, 2018

Trump to visit stricken community

Trump tweeted Friday that he planned to meet with victims in the sprawling suburban community about 35 miles north of Miami, although it was not yet clear when the meeting would take place.

The US leader is spending the long President's Day weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort, a 45 minute drive from Parkland.

"I will be leaving for Florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth - but people whose lives have been totally shattered," he said.

But Trump risked being greeted with angry demands for action on laws that allowed Cruz - who was expelled from Stoneman Douglas and whose behavior had unnerved acquaintances - to buy an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.

"It's illogical that the law says a minor can't have a drink, but can buy a gun," said Mavy Rubiano, the 47-year-old mother of a student who survived the shooting.

Stoneman Douglas students have taken to social media to blast defenders of the nation's loose gun laws.

In an eloquent essay published online, 17-year-old Cameron Kasky blasted both Republican and Democratic politicians for not doing anything.

"We can't ignore the issues of gun control that this tragedy raises," he wrote.

"And so, I'm asking - no, demanding - we take action now. Why? Because at the end of the day, the students at my school felt one shared experience - our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools."

Republicans sidestep gun control issue

In Washington the political response so far makes clear that the powerful National Rifle Association pro-gun lobby - which spent $30 million to support Trump's election in 2016 - remains formidable.

On Thursday Trump's nationally televised address made no mention of guns, or of previous mass shootings.

Trump instead treated the Parkland massacre - the 30th mass shooting of 2018 according to the Gun Violence Archive - as a singular event. He focused on offering sympathies to the families of the victims, on the need to tackle the challenges of mental health.

Republican House leader Paul Ryan, whose campaigns have earned NRA support, said Thursday that it was not a time for arguing over gun control, while Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio said new gun laws alone would not stop shootings.

Easily bought war weapon

As with previous mass shootings, the focus of gun control advocates was on the ready availability of the AR-15, a semi-automatic civilian version of the US military's standard-issue M16.

The NRA calls the AR-15 "America's most popular rifle."

Millions have been sold around the United States - a new one costs as little as $600. Stephen Paddock, who opened fire on a Las Vegas country music concert on October 1, 2017, killing 58 and wounding hundreds more, had more than a dozen AR-15s.

Devin Patrick Kelley, who shot and killed 26 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 5, used an AR-15.

And it was with an AR-15 that 20-year-old Adam Lanza murdered 26 students and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, the deadliest school shooting in US history.

Israeli politics told straight

I joined The Times of Israel after many years covering US and Israeli politics for Hebrew news outlets.

I believe responsible coverage of Israeli politicians means presenting a 360 degree view of their words and deeds - not only conveying what occurs, but also what that means in the broader context of Israeli society and the region.

That's hard to do because you can rarely take politicians at face value - you must go the extra mile to present full context and try to overcome your own biases.

I'm proud of our work that tells the story of Israeli politics straight and comprehensively. I believe Israel is stronger and more democratic when professional journalists do that tough job well.

Your support for our work by joining The Times of Israel Community helps ensure we can continue to do so.

Thank you,
Tal Schneider, Political Correspondent

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Students, parents demand gun curbs after Florida school shooting

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PARKLAND, Florida - Anger boiled over among parents and students in Parkland, Florida, on Friday over America's unwillingness to toughen gun control laws, after a disturbed teenager armed with an assault rifle murdered 17 at the local high school.

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On the same day as the protest, the president at the time, Donald Trump, speaks out about the incident and what he plans to do about it. In this speech, he mentions how they will better school security, and help with the mental health of the students from this school. What he does not mention, is changing any gun laws to prevent the ability of these kids to purchase guns.

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Trump focuses on mental health and school security, but doesn't mention gun laws, in speech on Florida shooting massacre

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After the Florida school massacre, other GOP officials including Paul Ryan caution against swift calls to tighten gun laws.

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Emma Gonzalez, who was a senior at the time, spoke out about this tragic event and how nothing is being done to prevent this from happening in the future. She goes on to explain how other countries across the world have barely any mass shootings because they have gun control. She also says how The presents receive money from the NRA (National Rifle Association), and how in just a month and a half the money the president receives divided by the gun shot victims equals out to $5,800 dollars per gunshot victim.

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Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, addressed a gun control rally on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, days after a gunman entered her school in nearby Parkland and killed 17 people.

Below is a full transcript of her speech:

We haven't already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one. Thank you.

Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it's time for victims to be the change that we need to see. Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not.

We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.

I read something very powerful to me today. It was from the point of view of a teacher. And I quote: When adults tell me I have the right to own a gun, all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student's right to live. All I hear is mine, mine, mine, mine.

Instead of worrying about our AP Gov chapter 16 test, we have to be studying our notes to make sure that our arguments based on politics and political history are watertight. The students at this school have been having debates on guns for what feels like our entire lives. AP Gov had about three debates this year. Some discussions on the subject even occurred during the shooting while students were hiding in the closets. The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic that has come up over 1,000 times in the past four years alone.

I found out today there's a website shootingtracker.com. Nothing in the title suggests that it is exclusively tracking the USA's shootings and yet does it need to address that? Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur (and after the) massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn't had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here we are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience.

I watched an interview this morning and noticed that one of the questions was, do you think your children will have to go through other school shooter drills? And our response is that our neighbors will not have to go through other school shooter drills. When we've had our say with the government - and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying 'it is what it is,' but if us students have learned anything, it's that if you don't study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it's time to start doing something.

We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law. That's going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it's going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the student now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.

There is one tweet I would like to call attention to. So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again. We did, time and time again. Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have not ostracized him, you didn't know this kid. OK, we did. We know that they are claiming mental health issues, and I am not a psychologist, but we need to pay attention to the fact that this was not just a mental health issue. He would not have harmed that many students with a knife.

And how about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the student's fault, the fault of the people who let him buy the guns in the first place, those at the gun shows, the people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic, the people who didn't take them away from him when they knew he expressed homicidal tendencies, and I am not talking about the FBI. I'm talking about the people he lived with. I'm talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.

If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I'm going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.

You want to know something? It doesn't matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one-half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don't do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.

To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.

Crowd chants, shame on you.

If your money was as threatened as us, would your first thought be, how is this going to reflect on my campaign? Which should I choose? Or would you choose us, and if you answered us, will you act like it for once? You know what would be a good way to act like it? I have an example of how to not act like it. In February of 2017, one year ago, President Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses.

From the interactions that I had with the shooter before the shooting and from the information that I currently know about him, I don't really know if he was mentally ill. I wrote this before I heard what Delaney said. Delaney said he was diagnosed. I don't need a psychologist and I don't need to be a psychologist to know that repealing that regulation was a really dumb idea.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was the sole sponsor on this bill that stops the FBI from performing background checks on people adjudicated to be mentally ill and now he's stating for the record, 'Well, it's a shame the FBI isn't doing background checks on these mentally ill people.' Well, duh. You took that opportunity away last year.

The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS.Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn't reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind.

(Crowd chants) Throw them out.

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Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS' | CNN

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Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, addressed a gun control rally on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, days after a gunman entered her school in nearby Parkland and killed 17 people. Below is a full transcript of her speech: We haven't already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one.

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Parents and Students mourning the loss of friends, family, and teachers

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Parents and Students mourning the loss of friends, family, and teachers

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People in the florida community gathered around and went from funeral to funeral mourning the death of friends, family, and teachers. This went on for days as more and more funerals were planned. At the same time many parents talked about how many of these students have never faced death before, so this might affect them more mentally than people might have assumed.

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PARKLAND, Fla. - Under vacation-blue Florida skies, the young mourners have emerged from family SUVs and minivans at funeral after funeral, high school girls in black dresses and heels and teen boys in black shirts and pants.

"This is physically and emotionally the kind of marathon I never want anyone else to have to run," said Ken Cutler, a city commissioner, following one of the funerals Sunday for victims of last week's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Seventeen people died, mainly teens.

"These are children who have never had death touch their lives," said Cutler, 58, whose wife is a teacher who survived the shooting.

"Facing your own mortality as an adult is hard enough. I can't imagine what it is like for a teenager."

Since Friday, they've attended a succession of funerals for teachers and fellow classmates. On Sunday, they memorialized geography teacher Scott Beigel and two 14-year-old students: Jaime Guttenberg, a freshman girl who loved dancing, and Alex Schachter, a freshman boy who played trombone in the school band. Both students had older siblings who survived the shooting, relatives said.

This affluent city of gated communities, private golf courses and top-notch schools is struggling to cope with the American tragedy of mass shootings. As in small communities before them, including Newtown, Conn., and Sutherland Springs, Texas, virtually everyone here knows someone who was killed. They are mourning together like family, with processions that clog streets and services that overflow hotel event rooms.

They are also fighting back with a focused fury: Parkland's teenagers, some in braces, have emerged since the shootings as a fearless and powerful political voice calling for stricter gun laws. On Sunday, in a round of appearances on national television, teenage survivors of the shooting, propelled by their haunting experience, announced the creation of " March For Our Lives " and what they hope will be a huge demonstration in Washington on March 24.

On its new website, the group's mission statement says: "Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students."

On ABC's "This Week," 11th-grader Cameron Kasky said the movement, whose hashtaginstantly went viral, aims to get beyond party politics and give a rising generation the chance to "create a new normal" out of entrenched gun politics.

"We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around," Kasky said.

But their raging activism is also mixed with quiet personal pain. At the same time that Parkland teens are trying to create a political force to challenge the National Rifle Association, they also are juggling funeral and burial schedules day after day.

Mental health specialists and others said funerals help bring closure and peace for grieving adolescents. But the sheer number has many worried about the long-term emotional damage of America's increasingly common schoolhouse slaughters.

"These funerals can be very empowering," said Priti Kothari, a child and adolescent psychiatrist based in nearby Boca Raton who knows many of the families involved, including a neighbor who lost a child in the shooting.

"There is a lot of noise in the media and so many unanswered questions," she said. "But in the intimacy of a funeral, you hear all the beautiful stories of these children, their vision of life and how you can carry it on."

She said it's notable how powerful and eloquent the Douglas students have been, spurred on by their grief.

"The adolescent brain is searching for meaning, and these funerals offer a way for them to ask, 'How can I be of service?' " Kothari said. "How does this anger turn into something that's productive?"

David Schonfeld, a pediatrician and director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at the University of Southern California, said rituals marking the end of a friend's life can be of great value to survivors, but the scale of this tragedy makes it particularly hard.

"Just a single death often makes us feel vulnerable," he said. "It shakes your assumptions about the world. It violates assumptions, for example, that when your parents send you to school, you will come back home alive. When you have multiple losses, it's even more difficult to feel safe."

Schonfeld and his center have helped coordinate mental health responses for many mass shootings, including in Newtown, Sutherland Springs, Aurora, Colo., and Las Vegas.

Relatively little research exists on the psychological effects of mass shootings on adolescents, but one study often cited is on the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack for New York schoolchildren.

It found that of 8,000 middle school and high school students who were affected by the attacks, more than a quarter suffered from psychiatric disorders that impaired them in their daily lives. Symptoms included PTSD, major depression, separation anxiety and panic attacks, and especially widespread was agoraphobia.

The symptoms persisted even six months after the attack.

George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University who studies grief and trauma, said his research shows that the vast majority of survivors of mass shootings don't develop long-term mental health disorders.

"Humans are resilient; they may be sad and upset afterward, but psychologically, they're okay," he said.

Here in Parkland, the funerals kept coming. So many people want to attend that many of the services have been moved to a large function room at a Marriott resort, a lemon-yellow complex with 30-foot palm trees and a lush golf course.

Twice on Sunday, hundreds of mourners, many of them parents and children holding hands, walked to funerals through overflowing parking lots, past hearses, black funeral limos and golfers unloading clubs. Many of them attended both services.

Cutler, the city commissioner, said the half-dozen or so funerals so far have helped this tightknit city cope - including his wife.

"The impact of this is going to be on her heart forever," he said after Alex's service. "But being with her friends from school, being with her community at these funerals, this is a big part of what's going to help her heal. Help us all heal."

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Funeral after funeral, an emotional marathon for survivors of the Parkland school shooting

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PARKLAND, Fla. - Under vacation-blue Florida skies, the young mourners have emerged from family SUVs and minivans at funeral after funeral, high school girls in black dresses and heels and teen boys in black shirts and pants.

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Peter Wang, who was a freshman at the time, died a hero. On the day of the shooting, Peter held the door for his fellow students so they could get away from this tragic event. While doing so, Peter was killed by the shooter. Peter died a hero and was buried with a U.S Army Medal of Heroism pinned to his chest. Also, Peter was given a full military burial with full honors.

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Peter Wang, a 15-year-old freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who spent the last moments of his life protecting other children, was buried on Tuesday.

There were too many people to fit in the Kraeer Funeral Home where the memorial service for Peter was held, so several hundred mourners-at least 200 of them students-crowded under a white tent in the parking lot out front.

The memorial was in English and Chinese, and the clear theme was that Peter died a hero.

On Feb. 14, as the shooter opened fire on his classmates, Peter held open a door for students to escape.

Then he was shot.

Peter was in the Junior ROTC. The flag at the funeral home flew half-staff. In just four days, nearly 75,000 people had signed a WhiteHouse.gov petition to give Peter a military burial with full honors.

"He acted like a true hero," said Henry Hyde of Fort Myers. Hyde drove his motorcycle with a group of veterans-the Patriot Guard Riders-from the west coast of Florida to escort Peter's funeral procession. They flanked the entrance to the funeral home with large American flags.

"We knew he was going to go into the military so we wanted to show him the same respect that we do veterans," said Hyde.

"I remember meeting Peter on the first day of sixth grade. He sat sort of near me. He always had a smile. And sometimes I wondered: what is this boy so happy about?" said 14-year-old Karina Eissler, who is friends with Peter's family and came to the memorial for moral support.

"Just seeing him sometimes on my worst days-just seeing him smile kind of made my day better," she said.

Karina said Peter's death wasn't fair. She talked about how shaken up she and her friends feel.

"We shouldn't have to think: What if I go to school and I don't come home after it? What if I leave on a bad note with my parents? What if I forget to feed the dog? Maybe I will never come home," she said. "We shouldn't feel like our last day could be at our school. We should feel like we have an entire life ahead of us."

Peter had hoped to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Instead, he was buried in his JROTC uniform with a U.S. Army Medal of Heroism pinned to his chest.

On Tuesday, just before his burial, West Point posthumously admitted Peter to the class of 2025.

Copyright 2020 WLRN 91.3 FM. To see more, visit WLRN 91.3 FM.

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Peter Wang, Who Died Protecting Other Children, Given Military Honors

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Peter Wang, a 15-year-old freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who spent the last moments of his life protecting other children, was buried on Tuesday. There were too many people to fit in the Kraeer Funeral Home where the memorial service for Peter was held, so several hundred mourners-at least 200 of them students-crowded under a white tent in the parking lot out front.

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After Peter Wang's funeral, students from parkland came together and traveled to tallahassee to fight for tighter gun laws. Also, Students from another local high school, West Boca Raton High, marched out of their school despite their teachers and principles trying to stop them and walked 12 miles to parklands campus. They did this because they too want to feel safe at school, and not have to think that they might not make it home one day.

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The torpor of Tallahassee notwithstanding, the Parkland students have managed to force their agenda.

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Mlb teams wear hats to honor victims of the shooting

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Mlb teams wear hats to honor victims of the shooting

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In the midst of all of the protests going on, the MLB joins in on the support of the victims from the Parkland School Shooting. The Marlins started this by choosing to wear highschool hats in their opening game. After the other teams heard about this, they decided to join in on it as well.

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All MLB teams to honor shooting victims with caps

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All 30 MLB teams to wear Douglas High School baseball caps in Spring training openers to honor Parkland shooting victims

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On March 14, 2018, Students around the United States walked out of their schools for 17 minutes to honor the seventeen students that were killed in the parkhill shooting. While some school officials and/or school security members were okay with this, others were not and tried to make their students stay in class instead. Though this did not stop a lot of these students as they left school anyway.

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A month ago, hundreds of teenagers ran for their lives from the hallways and classrooms of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff had been shot to death.

On Wednesday, driven by the conviction that they should never have to run from guns again, they walked.

So did their peers. In New York City, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Santa Monica; at Columbine High School and in Newtown, Conn.; and in many more cities and towns, students left school by the hundreds and the thousands at 10 a.m., sometimes in defiance of school authorities, who seemed divided and even flummoxed about how to handle their emptying classrooms.

The first major coordinated action of the student-led movement for gun control marshaled the same elements that had defined it ever since the Parkland shooting: eloquent young voices, equipped with symbolism and social media savvy, riding a resolve as yet untouched by cynicism.

"We have grown up watching more tragedies occur and continuously asking: Why?" said Kaylee Tyner, a 16-year-old junior at Columbine High School outside Denver, where 13 people were killed in 1999, inaugurating, in the public consciousness, the era of school shootings. "Why does this keep happening?"

Even after a year of near continuous protesting - for women, for the environment, for immigrants and more - the emergence of people not even old enough to drive as a political force has been particularly arresting, unsettling a gun control debate that had seemed impervious to other factors.

In Florida, where students from Stoneman Douglas High and other schools had rallied in the state capital, the governor signed a bill last week that raised the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 and extended the waiting period to three days.

On a national level, the students have not had the same impact. This week, President Trump abandoned gun control proposals that the Republican-led Congress had never even inched toward supporting.

But, for one day at least, the students commanded the country's airwaves, Twitter feeds and Snapchat stories.

Principals and superintendents seemed disinclined to stop them. Some were outright supportive, though others warned that students would face disciplinary consequences for leaving school. At many schools, teachers and parents joined in.

Wreathed in symbolism, the walkouts generally lasted for 17 minutes, one for each of the Parkland victims. Two more nationwide protests are set to take place on March 24 and on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

On a soccer field burned yellow by the Colorado sun, Ms. Tyner stood alongside hundreds of her fellow students, who waved signs - "This is our future," one said - and released red, white and blue balloons.

Yet in many places, for many students, Wednesday was just Wednesday, and class went on. Even at Columbine, the embrace of the gun control movement was not universal.

"People say it's all about gun control, it's all about, 'We should ban guns,'" said Caleb Conrad, 16, a junior, who stayed in class. "But that's not the real issue here. The real issue is the people who are doing it."

In the one-school rural community of Potosi, Wis., no student group had organized a protest. After a handful of students expressed some interest, the school decided to hold an assembly at 10 a.m. to talk about school safety measures and the value of being kind to one another.

At 10 a.m., one student, a female freshman, left the building alone.

Throughout the assembly, she sat by herself outside, by a flagpole, for 17 minutes. She appeared to be praying, said the principal, Mike Uppena, adding that she was not in trouble for leaving.

Officials in Lafayette Parish, La., initially said that students could participate in the day's events, believing that it was appropriate to honor the Florida victims. But when it became clear there was a political motive to the walkout, a torrent of complaints from the local community led the school board to adopt a new plan: a minute of silence.

Dozens of students walked out anyway.

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In some places, demonstrators chanted and held signs. At other schools, students stood in silence. In Atlanta, some students took a knee.

Thousands of New York City students converged on central locations - Columbus Circle, Battery Park, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Lincoln Center.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, stretched out on the sidewalk as part of a "die-in" with students in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the former home of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Hundreds sat in the middle of West 62nd Street for several minutes before rising to their feet and shouting, "No more violence." A cry of "Trump Tower!" sent dozens of protesters marching toward the Trump International Hotel and Tower across Broadway. Onlookers gave them fist-bumps.

In Washington, thousands left their classrooms in the city and its suburbs and marched to the Capitol steps, their high-pitched voices battling against the stiff wind: "Hey-hey, ho-ho, the N.R.A. has got to go!" One sign said: "Fix This, Before I Text My Mom from Under A Desk."

Members of Congress, overwhelmingly Democratic, emerged from the Capitol to meet them. Trailed by aides and cameras, some legislators high-fived the children in the front rows, others took selfies, and nearly all soon learned that the young protesters had no idea who they were.

Except, of course, for "BERNIE SANDERS!" which the protesters screamed at the Vermont senator, as well at some other white-haired, bespectacled legislators.

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A screenshot of a Snap map for student walkouts in the New York City area.

Asked by reporters about the walkouts, Raj Shah, Mr. Trump's deputy press secretary, said the president "shares the students' concerns about school safety" and cited his support for mental health and background check improvements.

As the hours passed, the walkouts moved west across the country.

"It's 10 o'clock," said a man on the intercom at Perspectives Charter Schools on Chicago's South Side. With that, hundreds of students streamed out of their classrooms and into the neighborhood, marching past modest brick homes, a Walgreens and multiple churches.

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Several current and former Perspectives students have been killed in recent years, the school president said.

"You see different types of violence going on," said Armaria Broyles, a junior who helped lead the walkout and whose older brother was killed in a shooting. "We all want a good community and we all want to make a change."

At Santa Monica High School in Southern California, teachers guided hundreds of students to the football field. It felt like a cross between a political rally and pep rally, with dozens of students wearing orange T-shirts, the color of the gun control movement, and #neveragain scrawled onto their arms in black eyeliner.

"It is our duty to win," Roger Gawne, a freshman and one of the protest organizers, yelled to the crowd.

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transcript

What Makes #NeverAgain Different?

The protests calling for stricter gun control measures come on the heels of other youth movements, but the momentum they have gained makes them stand out.

"Children are dying." "I will fight every single day." "I just want to speak." "We call B.S." These students survived a shooting at their school. Now they're leading a national movement for stricter gun control. Just days after the shooting, they called for school walkouts around the country, traveled to the Florida State Capitol - "You failed us" - and planned a nationwide march. Some of them can't even vote yet. It's clear these students are doing things differently. Here's how. #NeverAgain is leveraging social networks to mobilize faster than most movements before it, according to experts who study the rise of social and political movements. One week after the shooting, the #NeverAgain Twitter handle is verified and has more than 81,000 followers. In just a few days, student leaders have crowdsourced more than $3 million through online campaigns and celebrity donations. They're also handling their own crisis control by directly responding to critics. "I lost a best friend who was practically a brother, and I'm here to use my voice because I know he can't." These survivors are presenting their personal stories of loss as part of their fight, converting grief into power by getting in the face of adults. "So, Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the N.R.A. in the future?" The #NeverAgain movement wasn't formed in a vacuum. It's riding on the most recent wave of youth activism, which picked up speed around 2010. Student protests ebbed after the antiwar movement of the '60s and '70s. "We are fed up." Young people today are getting involved to change systemic inequalities they were raised to believe had already been taken care of. The Dreamers, students against sexual assault, Occupy Wall Street, and the Black Lives Matter movement all had strong involvement by college-educated millennials. These groups have had modest success. President Barack Obama made sure campuses did more to investigate cases of sexual assault. And he later protected Dreamers from deportation. "You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law." It's too early to tell if the #NeverAgain movement will sustain the momentum it needs to bring tangible change. But it's an election year, so politicians might find their demands difficult to ignore.

The protests calling for stricter gun control measures come on the heels of other youth movements, but the momentum they have gained makes them stand out.

Although the walkouts commanded attention on cable television and social media for much of Wednesday, it also was clear that many students did not participate, especially in rural and conservative areas where gun control is not popular.

At Bartlesville High School in Bartlesville, Okla., where hundreds of students walked out of class last month to protest cuts in state education funding, nothing at all happened at 10 a.m.

"I haven't heard a word about it," the principal, LaDonna Chancellor, said of the gun protest.

In Iowa, Russell Reiter, superintendent of the Oskaloosa Community School District, suggested that temperatures below 40 degrees may have encouraged students to stay indoors, but he also said that "students here are just not interested in what is going on in bigger cities."

There was opposition even in liberal Santa Monica. Just after the organizers of the walkout there read the names of the Parkland victims, another student went on stage, grabbed the microphone and shouted "Support the Second Amendment!" before he was called off by administrators.

Some of the day's most poignant demonstrations happened at schools whose names are now synonymous with shootings.

Watched by a phalanx of reporters, camera operators and supporters, hundreds of students crowded onto the football field at Stoneman Douglas High shortly after 10 a.m.

A month after the Feb. 14 shooting, notes of condolence, fading flowers and stuffed toys, damp from recent rain, still lay on the grass outside the school and affixed to metal fences.

The walkout was allowed by the school, but several students said they were warned that they would not be permitted back onto the campus for the day if they left school grounds. Despite the warning, a couple of hundred students marched to a nearby park for another demonstration.

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"We need more than just 17 minutes," Nicolle Montgomerie, 17, a junior, said as she walked toward the park.

An email from the school soon went out telling students they could return.

In Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, hundreds of students at Newtown High School gathered in a parking lot near the football field. Two hours later, it was Columbine's turn.

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Shortly after the walkouts began, the National Rifle Association said on Twitter, "Let's work together to secure our schools and stop school violence."

But the next tweet left no doubt as to where the N.R.A. stood on the message of the protests. It said, "I'll control my own guns, thank you. #2A #NRA" atop a photo of an AR-15, the kind of high-powered rifle used at Stoneman Douglas High and in other mass shootings.

The Gun Owners of America, a smaller organization often seen as more militant than the N.R.A., was more defiant.

The group urged its supporters to call their elected officials to oppose gun control measures like Fix NICS, which is intended to improve reporting by state and federal agencies to the criminal background check system. "We could win or lose the gun control battle in the next 96 hours," the group said on Twitter.

The group also celebrated "the pro-gun students who are not supporting their anti-gun counterparts."

Some schools accommodated or even encouraged the protests. But others warned that they would mark students who left as absent, or even suspend them.

In Cobb County, Ga., near Atlanta, the threat of punishment did not keep scores of Walton High School students from standing in silence on the football field for 170 seconds. A school district spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on what would happen to the students.

Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for policy and advocacy for AASA, the association of the nation's superintendents, said that schools had to balance the First Amendment rights of students with their other responsibilities, including safety.

Indeed, several protests were canceled because of threats of the same kind of violence the students were demonstrating against. A demonstration at Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C., was called off when the principal learned of what she later described as "a false rumor of a threat and a post on social media that caused unnecessary fear among our school community."

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National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S. (Published 2018)

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article Give this article Give this article Read in app A month ago, hundreds of teenagers ran for their lives from the hallways and classrooms of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff had been shot to death.

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In their final protest involving the Parkland shooting, people from all over the united states came together and demanded change in front of the nation's capital. This was most definitely their most impactful protest as many celebrities and other well-known individuals showed up to this event. This would not be the end of protests against gun violence, but it would be the last that involved this one particular event.

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Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the nation's capital and cities across the country Saturday to demand action against gun violence, vividly displaying the strength of the political movement led by survivors of a school massacre in Parkland, Fla.

Organized by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman killed 17 last month, the March for Our Lives showcased impassioned teens calling on Congress to enact stricter gun-control laws to end the nation's two-decade stretch of campus shootings.

Hundreds of "sibling protests" took place across the world, from New York City - where demonstrators spread across 20 blocks - to Jonesboro, Ark., a small city marking the 20th anniversary of a middle-school shooting that left four students and a teacher dead. Gun-rights advocates mounted counterprotests in Salt Lake City, Boise and Valparaiso, Ind., where one sign read "All Amendments Matter."

The scene at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington

People gather near the front of the stage hours before the start of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. (Salwan Georges)

Although the D.C. march was funded by Oprah Winfrey, George and Amal Clooney, and other celebrities, Stoneman Douglas High students have been its faces. Their unequivocal message to legislators: Ignoring the toll of school shootings and everyday gun violence will no longer be tolerated.

"To the leaders, skeptics and cynics who told us to sit down, stay silent and wait your turn: Welcome to the revolution," Cameron Kasky, a Stoneman Douglas student, said to a crowd that packed at least 10 blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. "Either represent the people or get out. Stand for us or beware. The voters are coming."

The main march in Washington was a heady mix of political activism, famous entertainers and the undisguised emotion of teenagers confronting the loss of friends and loved ones in a national spotlight.

Sam Fuentes, a senior shot in the leg at Stoneman Douglas, threw up on stage while delivering her speech to a national television audience. She recovered and led the crowd in a rendition of "Happy Birthday" for her slain classmate, Nicholas Dworet, who would have turned 18 on Saturday.

Emma González, 18, took the stage in a drab olive coat and torn jeans, speaking of the "long, tearful, chaotic hours in scorching afternoon sun" as students waited outside Stoneman Douglas High on the day of the shooting.

With a flinty stare, tears streaming down her face, González stood silent on the rally's main stage for nearly four minutes - evoking the time it took Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz to carry out his attack. The crowd began chanting, "Never again."

The moment was widely shared on social media. "Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job," González said before she left the stage.

The march emphasized not just the highly publicized mass shootings in suburban, white schools, but also the far more common shootings that leave one or two young people dead and often affect predominantly black and Hispanic students in poor neighborhoods.

Zion Kelly, a senior at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Southeast Washington, spoke about his twin brother, Zaire, who was shot and killed by a robber in September. Choking back tears before a rapt crowd, Kelly described the close bond they had shared.

"From the time we were born, we shared everything. I spent time with him every day because we went to the same schools, shared the same friends, and we even shared the same room," he said. "I'm here to represent the hundreds of thousands of students who live every day in constant paranoia and fear on their way to and from school."

The march drew a huge crowd, though there were no police estimates of its size. One indication: Metro officials reported there had been about 334,000 trips on the system by 4 p.m. Saturday, compared to 368,000 trips by the same time on the day of President Trump's inauguration. The Women's March last year generated 597,000 trips by the same time of day.

Because many of the demonstrators were children, authorities in the nation's capital said they took extra security precautions. By day's end, police had reported no violent altercations or other problems, despite a small contingent of counterprotesters decrying efforts to toughen gun laws.

"To be honest, I'm scared to march," Stoneman Douglas senior Carly Novell said in a Saturday morning tweet, citing the risk that a shooter might terrorize those gathered to protest in Washington. "This is a march against gun violence, and I am scared there will be gun violence on the march. This is just my mind-set living in this country now, but this is why we need to march."

The march offered a window on a generation that has come of age after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, which left 13 dead and is considered a milestone in the evolution of modern school shootings.

Nearly 200 people have died from gunfire at school since 1999, and more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, according to a Washington Post analysis. The analysis found that Hispanic students are nearly twice as likely as white students to experience gun violence at school, and black students three times as likely.

The most recent shooting took place Tuesday at Great Mills High School in Southern Maryland, where 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey was killed by her 17-year-old former boyfriend, who also died. About 100 Great Mills students attended the march, which drew people from around the country.

Callie Stone, 18, traveled to Washington from Raleigh, N.C.

"We've grown up knowing this could happen to us," said Stone, 18, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue before the march wearing a denim jacket emblazoned with "Nasty Woman," a term President Trump used to insult Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election and that progressive women adopted as a moniker.

With Stone was her mother, whom Stone had told the previous day that she wasn't sure she wanted to raise children in a world where students fear going to school. "But I said, 'Look at you, at your generation - you all are bringing us hope,'" said Kelly Stone, 54.

One couple at the rally, Rebekah and Chris Sullivan, described how their 4-year-old son already performs "active shooter" drills with his class, sitting quietly as his teacher rattles a locked door from the outside.

Jordin Torres, a junior at Howard High School in Ellicott City, Md., said she helps her instructors check that the blackout paper they're supposed to draw over classroom windows if a shooter attacks is untorn.

Torres carried a sign: "I have a dream that one day I won't be scared to go to school."

Other signs read, "It happened at my school," "Enough is enough!" and "I survived. My daughter didn't."

In Boston, where a sister rally was underway, a group of about 25 counterprotesters gathered in front of the gold-domed Massachusetts statehouse to decry calls for tougher gun laws.

"After a tragedy like this one, everyone looks past the motives of the shooter and immediately focuses on guns," said Robert Johnson, 21, of New York. "If you run over someone with a car, they don't blame the car. But if someone is shot, they immediately blame the guns."

As they have spoken out in the wake of the Parkland shooting, Stoneman Douglas students have endured frequent attacks from opponents of gun control, with some even falsely suggesting they were actors paid by liberal activists.

Houston lawyer and gun-rights activist Collins Iyare Idehen Jr., who uses the pseudonym Colion Noir as a host on NRATV, took to the airwaves ahead of the march to say the students were "getting ready to use your First Amendment to attack everyone else's Second Amendment" and that "no one would know your names" if the shooting had not occurred.

The White House issued a statement Saturday praising the marchers, despite their calls for tougher gun-control measures than President Trump supports.

"We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today," White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in the statement, in which she added that "keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President's."

The president himself was in Florida at Trump International Golf Club, about 35 miles from Parkland. The spending bill he signed on Friday includes a provision to tighten the nation's background-check system and may slightly open the door to restoring federal funding for gun research.

The Parkland students have already had an impact on the debate.

Lawmakers in Florida, a state long renowned as a laboratory for gun deregulation measures, passed its first significant gun-control legislation in 20 years this month in response to pressure from the Stoneman Douglas survivors.

They will stage another nationwide student walkout on April 20, the anniversary of Columbine, said David Hogg, one of the movement's leaders. And they are planning future marches on every state capitol.

It remains unclear whether they can shame Congress into passing new restrictions on guns. Many expected action after the killing of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. But although President Barack Obama wept on television and convened a task force to craft stricter gun controls, nothing happened.

James Barden, 17, was in Washington on Saturday, carrying a photo of his 6-year-old brother, Daniel, who was killed at Sandy Hook. Barden and his family have toiled for five years advocating for stricter gun-control laws.

He said he was heartened by the turnout Saturday. "If this doesn't do anything," he said, "I don't know." Asked how he felt about the demonstration, he replied, "Hopeful."

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the age of James Barden. He is 17, not 16.

Moriah Balingit, Kayla Epstein, Mary Hadar, Luz Lazo, Erin Logan, Justin Wm. Moyer, Antonio Olivo, Dana Priest, Katie Shaver, Rachel Siegel, Ellie Silverman, Kelyn Soong, Shira Stein, Patricia Sullivan and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report.

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'Never again!' Students demand action against gun violence in nation's capital

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Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the nation's capital and cities across the country Saturday to demand action against gun violence, vividly displaying the strength of the political movement led by survivors of a school massacre in Parkland, Fla.

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