On Valentine’s Day 2018, students at M.S. Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida hauled in their balloons and heart-shaped candies, walking hand-in-hand with their high school sweethearts for what they thought was any regular Valentine’s Day.
But this Valentine’s Day ended in a bloody massacre. Seventeen lives were taken by Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old murderer who was expelled from the school just the year before.
Cruz obtained an AR-15 legally and had no “cool off period” to obtain it. In Florida, you can take home your assault rifle the day you buy it. It was known that Cruz had weapons. The local police and even the FBI were aware of his violent threats and abundance of weapons.
Of the survivors of the massacre, are teenagers struck by tragedy and unafraid to use their voice to speak on their tragic, unforgettable experience. The students of M.S. Douglas High School are speaking out reverently against gun violence and the ease of apprehending a deadly weapon and its accessories.
Throughout the mainstream media are toxic conspiracies and situations of victim-blaming; they claim that the survivors are emotional, inexperienced juveniles that “haven’t had the life experience” to understand that using your political voice is something “for adults.” Or, that they are tragedy-chasing actors who appear on the news at multiple different locations at various times.
But this is not the case. These students once felt safe in their community and their sense of security was ripped from them on a day that was supposed to be filled with love. These children, although inferior by the number of years on this earth, experienced something no person, regardless of age, should ever encounter. That ages a soul. That brings wisdom, insight and the courage to act.
We shouldn’t take their emotion and outspokenness to be privilege or ignorance. These are not the kids eating Tide Pods. And I hope you can see that difference.
They took to social media, news outlets and the Florida state capitol to show that this record-breaking murder must be the last. Thousands gathered in Tallahassee to urge lawmakers to finally make a change.
Because of the courage of the M.S. Douglas students and their allies, Florida Gov. Scott announced major changes in gun and mental health reform predicted to go into effect as soon as July of this year.
Here’s the new program, right from the governor’s desk:
• Create the “Violent Threat Restraining Order” which will allow a court to prohibit a
violent or mentally ill person from purchasing or possessing a firearm or any other weapon
when either a family member, community welfare expert or law enforcement officer files a
sworn request and presents evidence to the court of a threat of violence involving firearms
or other weapons.
• Strengthen gun purchase and possession restrictions for mentally ill individuals
under the Baker Act. If a court involuntarily commits someone for treatment under the
Baker Act because they are at risk of harming themselves or others, an individual would be
required to surrender all firearms and not regain their right to purchase or possess a
firearm until a court hearing.
• Prohibit a person from possessing or purchasing a firearm if they are subject to an
injunction for protection against stalking, cyberstalking, dating violence, repeat violence,
sexual violence, or domestic violence.
• Require all individuals purchasing firearms to be 21-years-old or over.
• Establish enhanced criminal penalties for threats to schools, such as social media
threats of shootings or bombings, and enhance penalties if any person possesses or
purchases a gun after they have been deemed by state law to not have access to a gun.
• Ban purchase or sale of bump stocks.
• Mandatory School Resource Officers in every public school. Governor Scott is proposing at least one officer for every 1,000 students.
• Require mandatory active shooter training as outlined by the Department of
Homeland Security. All training and code red drills must be completed during the first
week of each semester in all public schools. Both faculty and students must participate in
active shooter drills and local sheriff’s offices must be involved in training.
• Increase funding in the Safe Schools Allocation to address specific school safety needs
within each district. This includes school hardening measures like metal detectors, bullet-
proof glass, steel doors, and upgraded locks.
• Establish a new, anonymous K-12 “See Something, Say Something” statewide,
dedicated hotline, website and mobile app.
• Establish funding to require access to dedicated mental health counselors to
provide direct counseling services to students at every school.
• Require each school to have a threat assessment team including a teacher, a local law
enforcement officer, a human resource officer, a DCF employee and DJJ employee, and
the principal to meet monthly to review any potential threats to students and staff at the
school.
• Require crisis intervention training for all school personnel.
• Expand mental health service teams statewide to serve youth and young adults with
early or serious mental illness by providing counseling, crisis management and other
critical mental health services.
• Require every sheriffs’ office to have a DCF case manager embedded in their
department to solely work as a crisis welfare worker for repeat cases in the community.
This is a huge win not only for the state of Florida, but for anyone affected by gun violence. Today, I am proud that the state has listened to the testimonials of the survivors of the Lakeland shooting and taken action in remembrance of all the innocent lives stolen at the hands of a firearm.
They might be young, but their story has affected real, legitimate change. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had five trips around the sun or 50; when voices are used for the good of all, amazing things happen.