Mourners pay their respects to the shooting victims at a candlelight vigil.
On Feb. 14 in Parkland, Florida, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. As a result of the shooting, seventeen people were killed and fifteen others were taken to the hospital for injuries.
The number of casualties makes the shooting one of the world’s deadliest school massacres, sharing parallels with the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 and the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.
Mass shootings are defined as “four or more shot and/or killed in a single event (incident), at the same general time and location, not including the shooter,” according to the Gun Violence Archives.
The perpetrator of the shooting is 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. According to reports from childhood friends and classmates, Cruz was known to torture and kill small animals and was even expelled from his high school for bringing bullets to school.
The 19-year-old gunman Nikolas Cruz was arrested and taken into custody after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a person close to Cruz reached out to the FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) to report concerns on him. The report was made on Jan. 5, a month before the shooting.
The FBI said in a statement on the Parkland shooting that the caller expressed concerns about Cruz’s behavior, specifically his gun ownership, desire to kill people and how he had labelled himself has a future “professional school shooter.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the FBI will figure out why nothing was done about the call made concerning Cruz, saying the agency “deeply regret(s) the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy.”
According to CNN, Cruz’s mother often had to call the local police in response to his behavior. Police documents include more than 30 reports since 2011, ranging from misbehavior and some from his younger brother.
However, even after the mass amount of reports, Cruz was still able to pass a background check and obtain an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle to shoot up his school.
In the light of this report, how could this have happened? With a history of violence and threatening behavior, how could someone as seemingly deranged as Nikolas Cruz be able to obtain a gun?
With this being said, the common debate returns on gun control: is this the time to talk about it? Thoughts and prayers are no longer enough - they aren’t going to prevent this from happening again in the future.
People such as Tomi Lahren and President Donald Trump argue this is a mental health problem and not a gun control problem. I argue that it can be both.
People with mental health problems shouldn’t be able to obtain a gun whatsoever, but it also shouldn’t be as easy as it is to get one. That’s where those two ideas come together.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), 4 to 5 percent of mass shooters are considered mentally ill. I feel that in order to kill people, one has to have some type of mental problem to begin with.
Roughly 40 percent of all the world’s firearms are in the possession of Americans, according to the Small Arms Survey. Not only that, but it’s incredibly easy to buy a firearm in the U.S.
You could go to your local Walmart and purchase a gun with a simple background check. All it takes is a simple form to fill out, and the background check goes to the state police. Sometimes it takes half an hour, but other times it could take a few days depending on certain criteria.
Background checks need to include stricter regulations and have more emphasis on both mental health and past reports on behavior.
During a speech on Feb. 15, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for “effective enforcement on gun laws focusing on criminals and dangerous people, mentally ill people.”
In response to the shooting, Sessions said he directed the office of Legal Policy to work with Health and Human Services, Education and Homeland Security to study mental health and how it intersects with criminal behavior.
As a country there needs to be more discussion on what we can do to prevent these shootings from happening again. Too many people have lost their lives because of gun violence.
Schools should be safe places for children, and the children in the United States shouldn’t be scared of whether or not they will make it home. Parents shouldn’t have to worry about if they’ll get to see their kid again after they walk out the door to get on the bus.
The United States needs to step up and realized there is a problem. Children’s lives are more important than gun rights.
