Miami, February 14, the 17 victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, South Florida, will be commemorated this Tuesday in private and public activities, five years after a bloody event that promoted the control movement. weapons in the United States.UU .
Broward County Public Schools, to which the town of Parkland, located about 67 kilometers north of Miami, belongs, will observe a minute of silence at 10:17 a.m. local time (1517 GMT) for those who died from the gunshots. shot with a semi-automatic rifle by Nikolas Cruz.
The young man, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022, had been a student at the school and on February 14, 2018, he entered the compound armed without being detected at security checks and triggered what is now the third mass shooting in a compound. American school with the most victims (Sandy Hook and Uvalde are the first and second).
In addition to the minute of silence in schools, various activities have been organized for Parkland’s fifth anniversary and a central event which will take place at night in a city park.
Authorities at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have asked the press not to visit the scene, where a makeshift memorial has stood since the day the shooting was recorded.
Relatives of victims and survivors should stop by the memorial.
Cruz, who confessed to police he was the shooter and then pleaded guilty and apologized to the court that tried him, was spared the death penalty because three of the twelve jurors voted against the application of the maximum penalty.
Fourteen of the victims of Cruz, who was 19 on February 14, 2018, were students and three were school personnel.
Their names appear in the media this Tuesday as a way of remembering an event that promoted the movement for arms control and which, although it made specific progress, did not achieve its main objective. .
The ban on selling assault weapons to the public like the ones used by Cruz, who bought them legally, like the others that were part of the arsenal he kept at his adoptive parents, is something the president of the United States also claims Joe Biden.
However, given the political influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), it is difficult for Congress to pass regulation in this regard, and even more so now that the Republicans have taken control of the Lower House.