‘Frozen in time.’ Kamala Harris tours bloodstained building where 2018 Parkland massacre happened

PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris visited a blood-stained school building on Saturday, 2018 Parkland High School Massacre happened, and then announced a plan to assist states with laws that allow police to temporarily seize guns from people a judge deems dangerous.

harris saw Walls and floors are riddled with bullet holes Still covered in dried blood and broken glass from the Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 14 students and three staff members and injured 17 others.

Halls and classrooms inside the three-story building are still littered with shoes left by fleeing students as well as withered Valentine’s Day flowers and balloons. Textbooks, laptops, snacks and papers are left on the table. She was informed of each deceased victim’s circumstances.

“Time was frozen,” Harris said repeatedly of what she saw. She was accompanied on the tour by family members of the victims, some calling for more spending on school safety and others for tighter gun laws.

Harris, who leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said there are lessons to be learned from Parkland both to stop school shootings before they happen and to mitigate them through measures such as ensuring classroom doors are not locked from the outside. event. Just like they did at Stoneman Douglas. She noted that shootings are the leading cause of death among children and teenagers.

“We have to be willing to have the courage to say at every level, whether it’s changing laws or changing practices and protocols, we have to do better,” Harris said.

At Stoneman Douglas, former student Nikolas Cruz, then 19, fired about 140 rounds from his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle during a six-minute attack, methodically moving from the first floor through the second. Then reach the third floor.

He pleaded guilty in 2021.he sentenced He will be sentenced to life in prison in 2022 after a jury failed to unanimously agree he should be sentenced to death. Anger the victim’s family.

The building was preserved so that his jury could visit it. It has loomed over the 3,600-student school behind temporary fences since it reopened two weeks after the shooting. Demolition is scheduled for this summer. No replacement plans have been announced.

After Harris’ tour ended, she announced a $750 million grant program to provide technical assistance and training to Florida and 20 other states with similar “red flag” laws.

Florida Law Allows police, with the permission of a judge, to temporarily seize firearms from anyone proven to be a danger to others or themselves. The statute has been used more than 12,000 times since it was enacted six years ago in response to the Parkland shooting.

Harris also called on Congress and states that don’t have red flag laws to adopt them. The Biden administration has called for a national red flag law.

Cruz had a long history of disturbing and bizarre behavior before the shooting, including animal abuse. In the weeks before the shooting, people reported him to local law enforcement and the FBI with concerns that he was planning a mass shooting, but no action was taken. In the 17 months between his 18th birthday and the massacre, he legally bought 10 guns.

“The purpose of red flag laws is simply to give communities a tool to share … information about concerns or calls for help about potential dangers,” Harris said.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who signed Florida’s red flag law as governor, issued a statement Saturday calling the Biden administration’s proposed national red flag law “radical” and saying the law would be modeled on California’s regulations that strip away firearms. Owner’s rights. California’s law is broader than Florida’s because it allows family members, employers and others to initiate the process, but evictions must be approved by a judge.

California’s law “abandons due process and makes it faster and easier to strip law-abiding Americans of their constitutional rights. This is unacceptable,” Scott said.

Harris’ tour is latest elected officials law enforcement and education leaders in recent months. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona visited the building in January, as have several members of Congress, mostly Democrats, since law enforcement returned custody of the building to the school district last summer of this building. FBI Director Christopher Wray and Secret Service Director Kimberly Chettle have toured the building in recent days.

“It’s important to have these people visit the building so that not only can they see the horror that still exists there, but so that we can point out the exact reasons for the failure,” said Tony Montalto, president of Stand With Parkland, which represents most of the victims’ families. . His 14-year-old daughter Gina was killed in the shooting.

Some of the Stoneman Douglass who attended the tour, along with Harris and President Joe Biden, want to ban the sale of AR-15s and similar guns as they did from 1994 to 2004, but there isn’t enough support in Congress. Opponents, including family members of other victims, argue such a ban would violate the Second Amendment and do nothing to curb gun violence.

Linda Berger Schulman said the tour showed Harris the carnage caused by mass shootings — and that it was no longer an abstract concept for her. Beigel Schulman’s 35-year-old son, geography teacher Scott Beigel, was killed as he led students to a safe classroom. The exam paper he was grading at the time of the shooting was still on his desk.

“She understands how important it is for us to prevent gun violence,” Berger-Schulman said of the vice president. “But when you go into the actual building and see what’s going on, it doesn’t matter six years later. It does help you.”

Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the shooting, used the tour to persuade officials to institute school security measures such as making doors and windows bulletproof. Alex, 14, died from a bullet fired through a classroom door and window.

Schacter said that despite differences over gun laws, school safety has brought both sides together. He singled out a fall visit from Utah officials that led the state to enact a $100 million plan to harden its schools.

“I couldn’t save Alex. But every time I let officers into that building, lives were saved,” Schachter said.