Bullet holes in classroom walls
- Mar 6, 2018
- 3 min read
On February 14 2018, a gunman set off the fire alarm of a Florida High School to cause panic and draw students out of their classrooms. He then open-fired several rounds from a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, through all three floors of the building, leaving 17 dead and 14 severely injured. The suspect was arrested, a mile away, at a McDonald’s. Nicolas Cruz, 19 an ex-student, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder has confessed to the shooting.
On February 19, thousands gathered for a special gathering in Parkland Florida to mourn the loss of teachers and young, promising students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On February 20, the survivors of the mishap, witnessed the Florida House of Representatives reject a bill that would ban assault weapons, leaving them deeply dejected. On February 25, parents and students returned to the school for the first time after the tragedy with mixed emotions.
Parents, teachers and the staff returned with heavy hearts to a campus filled with cards, balloons and other memorabilia for the innocent people who lost their lives in one of the deadliest school massacres the US has witnessed.
“I don’t know if I could feel safe again in a school like that,” Mikayla Strabitz, a student, showed concern. “Especially knowing there are so many entrances to that school and not knowing how Nikolas Cruz got in, that’s one scary thing.”
While Kailey Brown, a freshman, bravely said: "I am going to come back strong with my friends and show that we love each other so much and we are going to get through this."
Jim Gard, a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School said, “I’m anxious to get back. I’m happy to get back. I think we need to be — it’d be nice for us all to be together.”
The gunman identified as Nikolas Cruz was a 19-year-old former student of the same institution, who acquired the weapon legally. There were some red flags earlier which were ignored by the authorities. It has been known that the FBI was informed that he had posted on YouTube, about becoming a “serial school shooter” and has a history of behavioural disorders. All the signs were most likely dismissed as rebelling teenage hormones.
It is deeply unsettling, that a young boy decided to call an Uber, go to his alma mater, rain bullets at unarmed children and then patiently waited for the police while eating McDonald’s. Furthermore, neither the school nor the police were adequately prepared to deal with it.
In 1996, a gunman shot down 35 people in Australia, 12 days later, the gun laws were tightened. Similar incidents have resulted in major countries, like Britain and Germany, to revise their gun regulation norms within a few months. This is the 19th school shooting in the history of the United States of America and there is still no decisive action being taken.
Parents and children marched the state capital to demand stringent gun control and a ban on the sale of assault weapons. However, President Donald Trump publicly said that a lack of guns was the reason behind it. He claims, if the teachers had been armed, they would have easily stopped the assailant. There are two schools of thought, one goes with Malcolm X, “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.” The other goes with Mahatma Gandhi, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
Which is the way to go is still unclear. What is clear, that the youth should not be facing either side of a machine gun. Education should not be delivered in a classroom riddled with bullet holes. Children should not know what gunpowder smells like. Parents should not have to worry that every time they send their children to the school that it may be the last. It is time, that the people in charge put their thinking caps on and ponder over a solution.
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