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Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, USA

On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in the Miami metropolitan area. Seventeen people were killed and fourteen more were hospitalized, making it one of the world's deadliest school massacres and the deadliest high school shooting in modern U.S. history.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel visits Parkland shooting survivor Anthony Borges in the hospital on February 18, 2018.

Quotes

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  • ...pray for this city, pray for this school, the parents, the folks that lost their lives, it's a horrific horrific day.
    • Scott Israel, Sheriff of Broward County, in an interview with CNN.
  • Turn on your television right now. You're going to see scenes of children running for their lives. What looks to be the nineteenth school shooting in this country, and we have not even hit March ... This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter, this scourge of school shooting after school shooting, it only happens here not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.
  • It's a day that you pray every day that I get up [that we] will never have to see. It is in front of us and I ask the community for your prayers, your support for these children and their families. We're going to do whatever we can to come together as a community, to pull through this, and we will.
    • Robert Runcie, Superintendent, Broward County Public Schools, in an interview with CNN.
  • My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.
  • The AR-15, the civilian version of the military assault rifle (M16 or M4), has become the most commonly used rifle in US mass shootings; the recent shootings in Parkland and Las Vegas, for instance, testify to the effectiveness of this weapon’s design. It was made for the military, to allow members of the armed forces to better dispatch multiple enemies in short order; in the hands of civilians, it not only clearly serves the same purpose for some individuals, but it’s unclear what other purpose it could serve, given how and why it was made.
    ...a typical 9mm handgun wound to the liver will produce a pathway of tissue destruction in the order of 1-2 inches. In comparison, an AR-15 round to the liver will literally pulverize it, much like dropping a watermelon onto concrete results in the destruction of the watermelon. Wounds like this, as one sees in school shootings like Sandy Hook and Parkland where AR-15s were used, have high fatality rates.
  • The AR-15, the military-style rifle that a gunman used to kill 17 people at a South Florida high school Wednesday, is at once a ferociously powerful weapon, a symbol of freedom and individualism, and an object of despairing worry about the future of democracy.
    It is, depending on which political and social camp you belong to, “America’s rifle,” a way to “Control Your Destiny” or a killing machine that has no legitimate place in civilian life.
  • The suspect in a Florida school shooting bought the AR-15-style rifle used in the attack legally a year ago, authorities said Thursday. Nikolas Cruz, 19, is charged with murdering 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he had been expelled for fighting, according to authorities. Cruz lawfully bought the semiautomatic rifle last February, according to Peter Forcelli, special agent in charge of the Miami office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The gun, a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 .223, was purchased at Sunrise Tactical Supply, according to the Associated Press. Federal law allows people 18 and older to legally purchase long guns, including this kind of assault weapon. With no criminal record, Cruz cleared an instant background check via the FBI criminal database.
  • Feb. 14, 2018 Seventeen people were killed when Nikolas Cruz, 19, opened fire at his former high school in Parkland, Fla., with a Smith & Wesson M&P semiautomatic rifle.
    FEBRUARY 2017 Mr. Cruz legally bought the AR-15-style rifle at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Florida.
    2017 Mr. Cruz was expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for disciplinary reasons. He was described as a “troubled kid” who enjoyed showing off his firearms and bragged about killing animals.
    JANUARY 2018 A person close to Mr. Cruz warned the F.B.I. that Mr. Cruz had the potential to conduct a school shooting and a “desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts.” The F.B.I. said it failed to act on the tip.
    FEB. 14, 2018 Mr. Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
  • Stocks were up Thursday for American Outdoor Brands, the company that makes the AR-15 rifle used in the Florida school shooting that claimed 17 lives.
    The company’s shares closed up 1.49%, netting the company an additional $8.8 million on the day.
    The Associated Press reported that accused gunman Nikolas Cruz used a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle – a variant of the AR-15 – during his allegedly shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday.
    Smith & Wesson, which was founded in 1852, is a Springfield, Mass.-based holding of American Outdoor Brands....
    Shares of American Outdoor Brands closed 5.6% higher on Wednesday, the day of the shooting. It’s not uncommon for gun maker shares to rise following a mass shooting as people are likely to stock up fearing potential gun control measures.
    This is the third time an M&P15 has been used in a mass shooting in the United States.
    James E. Holmes, who was convicted of killing 12 and wounding 70 in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, used a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle. An illegally modified Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport rifle was recovered by law enforcement officials after the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, where 14 people were killed.
  • Sanders: I have a D minus voting record, from the NRA. I lost an election probably, for congress here in Vermont back in 1988, because I believe we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country. I am on record and have been for a very long time in saying we have got to significantly tighten up the background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. 40 percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to deal with the straw man provision which allows people to legally buy guns and then distribute. We’ve got to take on the NRA. And that is my view. And I am, will do everything I can to—the tragedy that we saw in Parkland is unspeakable. And all over this country, parents are scared to death of what might happen when they send their kids to school. This problem is not going to be easily solved. Nobody has a magic solution, alright, but we’ve got to do everything we can do protect the children—
    Todd: What does that mean? You say everything we can. Does that mean raising the age when you can purchase an AR-15? Does that mean limiting the purchase of AR-15s?
    Sanders: Yes! Yeah, look. Chuck, what I just told you is that for 30 years, I believe that we should not be selling assault weapons in this country. These weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing human beings. These are military weapons. I do not know why we have five million of them running around the United States of America, so of course we have to do that. Of course we have to make it harder for people to purchase weapons. We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon. Does this make any sense to anybody. Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it’s more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that, I surely hope they are.
  • A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than—and imparting more than three times the energy of—a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun...The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat traveling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange... If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun-shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to the trauma center to receive our care...
    As a radiologist, I have now seen high-velocity AR-15 gunshot wounds firsthand, an experience that most radiologists in our country will never have. I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.
  • A quick Google search shows that P. James Debney is the CEO and president of American Outdoor Brands, which until last year was named Smith & Wesson.
    By whatever name, the company Debney heads manufactured the AR-15 assault rifle that Cruz used to kill 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and three staff members....
    Debney kept selling assault rifles as if he were just selling more plastic after a madman with a Smith & Wesson assault rifle murdered 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater....The company’s profits came to include the sale of the M&P15 that was used in the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino. Fifteen were murdered....
    Smith & Wesson did experience a modest bump after a madman used one of its M&P15s to murder 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Valentine’s Day.
  • In focusing their anger on the likes of Wayne LaPierre, the survivors are distracted from the likes of James Debney, whose company actually designed, produced and marketed the weapon that killed so many innocents at their school. Debney knew it was a weapon of war. He also knew, or at least should have known, that M&P15 fires bullets of such velocity that when it hits flesh the accompanying shock wave extends the damage considerably outside the path of the bullet, shredding tissue, destroying entire organs, disintegrating blood vessels. He also knew that the M&P15 is a virtual twin to the Bushmaster AR-15 used with horrific effect on little kids at Sandy Hook.
    And yet he had kept selling it.
    Debney earns more than $5 million a year in what the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High survivors would no doubt consider blood money.
  • The main functional difference between the military’s M16 and M4 rifles and a civilian AR-15 is the “burst” mode on many military models, which allow three rounds to be fired with one trigger pull. Some military versions of the rifles have a full automatic feature, which fires until the trigger is released or a magazine is empty of ammunition.
    But in actual American combat these technical differences are less significant than they seem. For decades the American military has trained its conventional troops to fire their M4s and M16s in the semiautomatic mode — one bullet per trigger pull — instead of on “burst” or automatic in almost all shooting situations. The weapons are more accurate this way, and thus more lethal.
    The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups highlight the fully automatic feature in military M4s and M16s. But the American military, after a long experience with fully automatic M16s reaching back to Vietnam, decided by the 1980s to issue M16s, and later M4s, to most conventional troops without the fully automatic function, and to train them to fire in a more controlled fashion.
    What all of this means is that the Parkland gunman, in practical terms, had the same rifle firepower as an American grunt using a standard infantry rifle in the standard way...
    A New York Times analysis of a video from a Florida classroom estimates that during his crime the gunman fired his AR-15 as quickly as one-and-a-half rounds per second. The military trains soldiers to fire at a sustained rate of 12 to 15 rounds per minute, or a round every four or five seconds.
  • Compared with pistols, assault rifles are used rarely in shootings. According to F.B.I. statistics, 374 people were murdered with any kind of rifle in 2016; 7,105 were killed by a handgun.
    But the AR-15 has been a recurring character in some of America’s most infamous violent crimes. Adam Lanza used his to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook. Stephen Paddock used an enhanced AR-style gun to kill 58 concertgoers and wound hundreds on the Las Vegas Strip in October. A month later, Devin Kelley murdered 26 congregants with a Ruger AR-15 variant at a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex. And the rampage last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., renewed calls for assault-style rifles to be banned — a common refrain after mass shootings.
  • Beginning Thursday, a group of students will march westward a quarter of the way across Massachusetts in the latest act of a national, youth-led campaign to save lives and change the conversation about gun violence....
    The activists have two main goals. The first is to get Smith & Wesson to agree to stop manufacturing military-style weapons like the M&P 15, an AR-15-style rifle that has been used in a number of recent high-profile shootings, including in Parkland, Florida, in February, in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, and in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.
    The second is for Smith & Wesson to donate $5 million to study gun violence and other crimes involving the company’s firearms.
  • Parkland, Florida.
    Las Vegas, Nevada.
    Sutherland Springs, Texas.
    Now, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Recent deadly mass shootings in these US cities have at least one thing in common: the AR-15....
    This weapon has become increasingly popular in the US, especially since the 1994 federal weapons ban expired in 2004, and has been used in many other mass shootings around the country. Not just the three listed above.
    To understand how and why this has happened, we put together a historical overview of the weapon and spoke with David Chipman, a senior policy analyst at Giffords and former special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives....
    Chipman said that he believes AR-15s have been so frequently used in mass shootings for two reasons: popularity and lethality.
    "It's a two-fold thing: the AR-15 is like the 4-door sedan of assault rifles," Chipman said. "It was America's weapon ... there's an Americana aspect."
    But so many mass shootings become mass shootings "because the AR-15 was used," he said, adding that the damage the weapon does to the human body pales in comparison to a handgun.
    "I've talked to ER physicians," Chipman said. "Rifle rounds are so devastating to the human body."

See also

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