Last February, the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School acted as a call to action for Parkland, Florida. After 17 students and staff members died and 17 more were injured, many in the community rallied to raise awareness about gun safety, promote stricter gun laws, and open the discussion, nationally, about trauma and mental health.
One year later, 123 new gun laws have been introduced or enacted across the country. A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds, however, that the urgency for increased gun regulation has stalled. When asked if laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter, 51% said yes, compared with 71% one year ago, in the immediate aftermath of Parkland.
‘The way out’
Author Dave Cullen, who also covered the 1999 high school shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, traveled to Parkland following the tragedy last February.
Cullen noted there are differences between the two mass shootings, but relates them as turning points in the “school-shooter era.”
“Columbine wasn’t the first school shooting, and Parkland, already, isn’t the last,” Cullen told Yahoo Finance. He hopes that in “ten, twenty years ... these will be the two bookends.”
A report called "Since Parkland" found that in the year since Parkland, 1,200 children have died from gun violence. The project was supported in conjunction with The Trace, a news organization dedicated to reporting gun violence, the Miami Herald and other McClatchy newspaper group publications, and the Gun Violence Archive, which keeps count of shootings.
“Parkland, I believe and I pray, will be the beginning of the end and the way out of gun violence,” Cullen said. “That’s what was important here. … It’s the start of something.”
He noted the resilience and determination of the students in the months following the shooting. The core group spent time organizing, speaking out, and building a case for stricter legislation. Their efforts culminated in the inaugural March for Our Lives in Washington last March.
“The odyssey these kids went on last year, for 10 months to the midterms, was just extraordinary — a nonstop, marathon sprint,” Cullen said.
Impact on students
The author, whose book “Parkland” gives an intimate portrait of the lives of Parkland’s student activists following the tragedy, recognizes that each student affected copes differently.
“For most of them,” though, the community being built has “really been incredibly helpful” in helping to process the trauma.
In traditional therapy methods, role-playing techniques are often used to help trauma survivors. The simulation helps the survivor gain “a sense of control and personal power,” Cullen explains.
“These kids [from Parkland] are actually getting control of their situation,” he said.
Following the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, a study found that survivors of trauma who found solidarity among their peers — remaining on campus, attending sporting events together — “showed better measures of both emotional and physical wellbeing a year later.”
Parkland, Cullen said, “was a really exaggerated version of that, where they had the school, but then they had each other really doing this together. It was kind of the perfect therapy.”
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