Parkland activists join renewed push for gun safety laws
Local activists, including some familiar faces from Parkland, are doubling down in their roles as experts to help pave the way toward gun safety reform.
The push for laws that would prevent mass shootings and gun violence gained renewed energy in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, along with the news that gun violence is now the number one killer of American children. Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was murdered in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, testified before Congress on Wednesday morning.
He urged senators to support two proposals he helped develop through his work to make schools safer and prevent the next school shooting: The Luke and Alex School Safety Act and the EAGLES Act.
“After 9/11, we made the airplanes safer. After the Oklahoma City bombing, we made the federal buildings safer,” he said. “Twenty years after Columbine, and children and teachers continue to be murdered in their classrooms.
“Now is the time to pass into law legislation that Parkland families have been working on for four years,” he said. “We cannot focus on school safety only when a tragedy happens. It must be a year-round priority to prevent the next Uvalde and Parkland.”
Schachter explained that the Luke and Alex School Safety Act was named for his son and his son’s good friend Luke Hoyer, who was also killed in the shooting at Stoneman Douglas in Parkland. The legislation would codify a school safety clearinghouse into federal law that would act as a streamlined, one-stop shop for the best practices regarding school safety, from physical security measures to mental health counseling, he said.
The clearinghouse launched in 2020, and offers 40 programs that offer $2 billion in funding for grants, he said.
The EAGLES Act would expand the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center for a greater focus on school violence prevention. Lawmakers previously tried and failed to pass the legislation.
The Secret Service established the National Threat Assessment Center in 1998 to develop evidence-based indicators of various types of targeted violence, including school shootings.
The center developed a threat assessment model used by law enforcement to identify potentially violent individuals, assess whether an individual poses an imminent threat and determine how to manage the threat. Among its findings are that most attackers exhibit indicators of pre-attack behavior.
Gun safety advocates held a gun violence prevention forum to continue the discussion online on Wednesday night. Panelists included Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz; U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch; Sami Barrios, Florida’s director of gun control group Giffords; Beth DuMond, the legislative lead for Moms Demand Action; and Fred Guttenberg, senior adviser for the Brady PAC.
Guttenberg’s daughter Jaime was killed in the shooting at MSD. He remarked on the momentum after Parkland and the renewed passion coming from Uvalde.
“Parkland showed the importance of finally making a movement — there was speed, there was motion, and there was leadership,” he said. “I think we’re seeing that replicated on a national level now, when people from all corners of the country react so viscerally to kids being killed that you can’t ignore it.”
The difference he said he sees now is more bipartisan agreement between political parties, which he said makes him feel hopeful that more Republicans will be on board with efforts to increase safety measures around gun ownership. “That is a big deal,” he said.
Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: bbaitinger@sunsentinel.com, 954-422-0857 or on Twitter: @bybbaitinger
