Staff and students of Majory Stoneman Douglas High School suffered from a school shooting resulting in 17 casualties and 15 injuries on February 14th, 2018.
Massacre at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School
Nikolas Cruz, a former student of the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School who was expelled for disciplinary reasons, decided to return to the school on Valentine’s Day for a shooting with unclear motives. According to CNN, Cruz entered the school building, pulled out his rifle, and activated the fire alarm. Students did not think the alarm as a drill because there was a fire drill earlier on that day. As the confused students began to run out of their classrooms, Cruz started to shoot them down. Students returned to their classrooms and locked the doors once they realized this was a school shooting. This did not stop the brutality of Cruz, however, as 17-year-old Hannah Carbocci mentioned “someone shot through the classroom walls and my classmate was injured.” A total of 17 deaths occurred until Cruz stopped the shooting, and made it out mixed amongst the other students.
Mass Shootings in the United States (US)
The Florida school shooting was a shocking incident indeed, but it was only one out of countless shootings occurring in the US. The Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization which provides information on gun violence, reported that there were 1,624 mass shootings in the 1,870 days that the GVA has been collecting data. This calculates to about nine mass shootings in every 10 days in the US. The data also shows that there were already 7,302 shootings this year, resulting in 2,021 deaths and 3,472 injuries as of February 19th, 2018. US’s gun problems have surfaced as a major issue once again due to the Florida shooting, but have a long way to go as The Guardian reported that 265 million private guns are owned in the US, a number higher than the number of adults living there.