After Florida shooting, renewed calls for Congress to act on gun control
After at least 17 people were killed Wednesday in a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Connecticut Democrats and Sandy Hook activists renewed calls for Congress to act on gun control.
The shooting was the nation’s deadliest school shooting since the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown in 2012.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in a statement implored Congress to do something to reduce the crisis of gun violence in the U.S, adding “enough is enough.”
“While we don’t know all the details of this horrific event, this act of carnage is all too familiar,” Malloy said. “This is the 18th school shooting in the 45 days of 2018. That’s not acceptable.”
A 19-year-old suspect taken into custody was a former student at the school who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The former student had an AR-15 assault rifle, the same type of weapon used at Newtown, and multiple magazines. The shooting involved students and adults and began inside before moving outside, the sheriff said.
“It only happens here not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on the Senate floor. “We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”
Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, took to Twitter after the Florida shooting.
“Our neighborhood was locked down on 12/14/12 too,” Murray posted. “My heart is with all the families, first responders & the community members who are living this nightmare right now. #ParklandShooting.”
Murray shared his organization’s own tweet, which criticized Congress for lack of action, and shared a video of children running out of the high school with their arms in the air.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also took to the Senate floor, and said the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “brings back memories that are searing and harrowing.”
“Once again, we feel that churning in our stomach, that sense of gut punch, and a wrenching of hearts that reminds us of how we felt that day of violence in Newtown,” Blumenthal said. “And yet another school is victimized by gun violence.”
Clarice Silber is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (www.ctmirror.org). Copyright 2018 © The Connecticut Mirror.
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