The Attack in Parkland, Florida, Is the 18th School Shooting So Far in 2018
At least 17 people died today at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a 19-year-old carrying an AR-15 opened fire there on Wednesday afternoon, officials said. The attack in Parkland, Florida, marks what is now the 18th school shooting so far in 2018. (To compare, by this time last year, there had been 7.) AR-15-style rifles were also used in the Texas church shooting, as well as the attacks on San Bernadino, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, and Pulse nightclub. The victims in Parkland were both adults and students; the suspect is now in custody. The attack is now among the 10 deadliest in American history.
“My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting,” President Trump wrote on Twitter. “No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.” The National Rifle Association spent $30 million supporting Trump in the 2016 election. There has been no movement by his administration to lift the Congressional stalemate over gun safety legislation, with most Republican members of the House refusing to “politicize” a tragedy. (Despite the fact that as David Frum has pointed out in The Atlantic, more shootings tend to beget looser gun restrictions, rather than the opposite, and despite the fact that mass shootings are so frequent these days that the idea of holding off discussion for a set mourning period would be essentially a Sisyphean exercise.) “I feel today like our government, our country, has failed us and failed our kids . . . failed to keep us safe,” a Stoneman Douglas High School teacher told Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Earlier this month, Ava Olsen, a 7-year-old who survived a shooting at her South Carolina elementary school, wrote President Trump a letter, asking how he planned to protect children like her and her classmates. He wrote back, with bland assurances, and without specifics. “Are you going to keep kids safe? How can you keep us safe?” Olsen asked in her letter, “Don’t let any more bad people get guns and hurt kids.” Thoughts and prayers have never been enough.
