Parkland massacre changed us. But, three years later, it still hasn’t changed us enough | Editorial
The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 forced Florida to change in fundamental ways. The state grudgingly passed gun-control legislation, reversing decades of gun-lobby influence in a matter of weeks. The agonized eloquence of students from the school built a protest movement that spread across the country and led to a nationwide March for Our Lives school walkout. A reassessment of school safety finally brought action on long-simmering issues, including mental health and armed campus security.
Now, three years after the Valentine’s Day assault that killed 17 people and injured 17 more, it’s apparent that the attack in our community continues to shape the national dialogue on both gun violence and social justice. On the anniversary of this tragedy, as we struggle to find light in the darkness, we can honor the dead by highlighting that progress — and building on it.
We know many of the survivors by name, because they’ve chosen public roles. Lori Alhadeff, a former teacher whose daughter, Alyssa, was killed in the shooting, won a seat on the Broward County School Board in 2018, a platform she uses, in part, to advocate for school safety. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, died in the attack, is an outspoken gun-safety activist.
Former Parkland student David Hogg has become a gun-control activist, pounding the halls of the U.S. Capitol to talk to members of Congress — and, most recently, enduring the harassment of now-Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose unhinged social-media posts and comments spread dangerous lies, including the sickening claim that Parkland was a “false flag planned shooting.”
People like Hogg, Alhadeff and Guttenberg rightfully make sure we don’t forget what happened at Parkland. There are others, too — people not so squarely in the spotlight but still doing their part to make the world a better, safer place.
Some took their efforts to the scene of the horrific crime. For instance, Mary Benton, founder of Bound By Beauty, based in Miami Shores, rallied a team that assisted traumatized students and teachers to create Marjory’s Garden, a butterfly garden to provide sanctuary and sustenance to humans and to wildlife.
“I was absolutely propelled to try to help,” Benton told the Herald Editorial Board. “A garden can represent life and hope and beauty and promise, no matter how tragic and horrible the world can be.”
Kai Koerber, a former Parkland student who now attends the University of California Berkeley said that his experiences after the shooting — followed by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota last year — led him to an interest in mental health and social justice. He’s created a research project that he says will use artificial intelligence to help rein in police misconduct. The work is, fittingly, being done through the university’s Greater Good Science Center.
“I think if you give people the tools to live positive and progressive lives,” he told the Editorial Board, “you won’t have to threaten them with brutality.”
Gun safety stalls
Efforts like these, making a personal contribution toward a better society, are especially meaningful now. After the initial flurry of gun legislation, headway on gun safety became next to impossible in Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. And even the laws that were passed in 2019, labeled the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, aren’t necessarily a given. They may have been signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, with bipartisan support, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said during his 2018 campaign that he would have vetoed the law — though there were parts he liked — rejecting it because of the restrictions on guns.
Yet that legislation created landmark — and common-sense — changes that this state needed. It raised the age for purchasing a gun to 21, created a three-day waiting period and banned bump stocks — an attachment that enables a semi-automatic weapon to fire faster. It also started a controversial program to train and arm school faculty. At the same time, the state also passed a “red flag” law that allows police, with a court’s approval, to temporarily seize weapons from people considered a threat to themselves or others.
In the years after the shooting, Parkland’s influence spread across the country, with 67 new gun laws enacted in 26 states and Washington, D.C.
That’s a lot of progress, but it’s also not enough. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s annual gun-law scorecard still gives Florida only a “C minus” rating. Among its chief suggestions to strengthen the state’s gun laws is requiring a background check on all gun sales, a basic safeguard in a place still widely known as the “Gunshine State.”
Pushing “Jaime’s Law”
Guttenberg is among those who worry that the state’s efforts to address the grievous wounds of Parkland are faltering. While a bill to ban assault-style weapons once again has been introduced for the legislative session that starts in March, it’s likely to be as fruitless as in previous years. Guttenberg said he’ll continue to push for lawmakers to consider “Jaime’s Law” to require background checks for most ammunition purchases. Stand with Parkland, a school-safety group that represents many of the victims’ families, helped craft a “Parents Need to Know” bill, sponsored by Broward County Reps. Shevrin Jones and Dan Daley, which would require schools to inform parents of school threats and security lapses, and tell them how those concerns are being addressed.
But laws are not the only way to make progress. Often, social media can make an impact.
In a striking moment this month, Miami-Dade’s three Republican members of Congress cast critical surprise votes to strip Georgia’s Greene of her committee assignments. While she had been on record for some time repeating QAnon conspiracy theories, questioning whether the 9/11 terrorist attacks were real and calling school shootings “false flag” events, video evidence of her harassing Hogg struck a chord in South Florida. Guttenberg shared many of those videos online.
Those votes by newly elected Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez, along with veteran Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, hardly amount to profiles in courage, with the next election less than two years away. But they do offer hope.
Broward County Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was behind the measure to remove the one-time Parkland denier from committees that included the House Education Committee, called that moment a “difficult vote of conscience” for the three South Florida Republicans. She noted that Greene’s “promotion of conspiracy theories and intimidating actions were especially painful to the dear families we have come to know and represent who are still recovering from the Parkland mass shooting that took 17 lives.”
The three Republican House members broke with their party to back Greene’s ouster from House committees. It was a needed show of support and advocacy for Parkland’s cause. Three years on, those 17 deaths will mean nothing if we don’t all show the same commitment.
This story was originally published February 13, 2021 at 3:40 PM.
