A day celebrated for love ended with grief as 17 students were shot and killed (several more were injured) during a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was allegedly the 18th school shooting to occur thus far. Survivors of the shooting – students- have begun protesting the lack of gun control in America. “This the 18th one this year. That’s unacceptable. We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role.” said survivor, David Hogg. Despite facing a horrific tragedy the students are proving to be resilient, and challenging lawmakers to impose restrictions on guns. February 20th, students banded together to the state capital, Tallahassee, to speak with legislators to ban assault rifles.  The students were left disappointed as the ban did not pass, and Florida decided that pornography is a greater risk to the public rather than guns.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, was a former student at the high school in which he killed 17 students. In his court appearance, he has been charged with premeditated murder for each person killed. He was expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School due to disciplinary actions such as threatening students and allegedly carrying bullets in his backpack to school. The school staff was warned of his behavior, an email they received said Cruz was not allowed on campus with a backpack on. The FBI also received a tip about Cruz from YouTube personnel claiming that a comment left by “nikolas cruz” wanted to become a professional school shooter. Despite investigating the tip, the FBI’s search came back inconclusive as they did not connect the two until the massacre. “Is it now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a statement to media. “We see the tragic consequences of those failures.”

The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school are now using this tragedy to speak against gun control. “Everybody needs to remember, we are just children. A lot of people think that disqualifies us from even having an opinion on this sort of matter…This matters to me more than anything else in my entire life. And I want everybody to know, personally, I’m prepared to drop out of school. I’m prepared to not worry about anything besides this…I know everyone else here will fight for the rest of their lives to see sensible gun laws in this country, so that kids don’t have to fear going back to school,” said Alfonso Calderon, a junior.

President Donald Trump met with students at the White House, after listening to their cries and pleas, he suggested it would be best to arm teachers.”If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly,” he said, stating that schools could arm up to 20% of their teachers to stop “maniacs” who may try and attack them.