Activities in honor of 17 victims of high school shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas from Parkland (South Florida) held this Tuesday, the 5th anniversary of this tragic event, have served as platforms for reflection and for the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to announce a fund for the restriction of firearms.
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The fund will allocate 231 million dollars so that states that wish to implement programs aimed at restricting access to firearms and offering mental health treatment.
At 10:17 a.m. this Tuesday (local time), students and staff of the Broward County public schools, where the town of Parkland is located, observed a minute of silence in honor of those who died as a result of the shots fired with a semi-automatic rifle by Nikolas Cruz.
At Silver Lakes Magnet Middle School, several students wearing red T-shirts sat in the courtyard forming two hearts, in what has been a day of reflection and tribute to the 14 students and 3 school staff members deceased on February 14, 2018.
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Broward school superintendent, Valerie Wanza, pointed out during the activity in this educational center that in this “hard day for everyone” you have to pay tribute, reflect and transmit positivity to the community.
Throughout the day of this Tuesday several people have approached the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school, to renderr tribute to the victims through flowers placed on the improvised mural that has been erected five years ago on one of the exterior fences of the enclosure or by observing moments of silence.
You kill 17 people, what other penalty can you receive besides the maximum penalty?
One of them was the Colombian Liliana Rodríguez, who told EFE that a friend of hers, Esperanza Collazo, was a cleaner at the school and was present on the day of the events, after which he left his post due to stress.
She added that her daughter is a teacher at a school in Palm Beach County, north of Parkland, and that she feels “Students are under more and more pressure” at the risk of a shooting like the one that occurred in Parklandthe third in an American school that has left the most victims.
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Increased arms control and review of the death penalty
This Tuesday, President Biden announced a fund of 231 million dollars for states that wish to implement programs aimed at restricting access to firearms and offer mental health treatment.
As Biden explained in a statement, this fund will be distributed by the Department of Justice and will help the states of the country to implement the calls “red flag programs”which allow restricting access to weapons to those individuals who pose a danger to themselves or others.
Also, during the day this Tuesday, the state governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, reiterated his promise of a legal change so that Florida judges can impose the death penalty without the need for a unanimous jury verdict.
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“You kill 17 people, what other sentence can you receive besides the maximum sentence? And yet, you have an obstacle that can nullify that,” he said Tuesday at a press conference, alluding to the life sentence he was sentenced to. last year received Cruz, who had pleaded guilty to all charges.
Under Florida law, a unanimous jury was required to recommend the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 when he carried out the killings and has a history of misconduct, aggression and an obsession with guns.
Three of the twelve jurors voted against capital punishment, alleging that Cruz, a former student at the high school scene, He suffered from mental problems.
Florida Congressman Jared Moskowitz, a former student of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School and who this Tuesday participated in an act in Parkland, highlighted a law passed by the United States Congress in June of last year, when Democrats and Republicans agreed to increase gun control for the first time in 30 yearsHowever, he recognized that more needs to be done.
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In 2022, at least 19 students and 2 adults were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. but the worst massacre in a US educational center is the one that occurred in 2012 at an elementary school in Sandy Hook (Connecticut) where 26 people lost their lives, 20 of them children aged 6 and 7.
Dissatisfaction with the sentence of Nikolas Cruz
fair would have been
to be applied
the ultimate punishment
“Devastated” is the word that Tony Montalto chooses to describe what he feels five years after the death of his daughter Gina, who was murdered at the age of 14, but Montalto is at the same time “disappointed” by the life sentence imposed on Cruz in the jury trial that took place in 2022.
“It would have been fair to apply the maximum punishment established by Florida law, which includes capital punishment,” Montalto stressed.
cross, what On the same day of the massacre, he confessed to the police that he had been the perpetrator and later pleaded guilty. brought to justice on all charges and apologized, he was not sentenced to death because three of the twelve jurors voted against it, alleging that he suffered from mental problems.
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Montalto is not the only dissatisfied that the jury did not achieve the unanimity required by law to recommend the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who he was 19 years old when he carried out the massacre and a record for misconduct, aggressiveness and love of guns.
After Cruz’s trial, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised the need for a legal change so that Florida judges can impose the death penalty without the need for a unanimous jury verdict.
Regarding whether greater control of firearms would serve to prevent massacres like the one in Parkland, Montalto said that he tries “to be realistic” with the situation in the country and to focus on “things that can be done”, after recalling the Second Amendment of the US Constitution that protects the right to keep and bear arms.
“There are many things that must be done to prevent these tragedies, such as the introduction of security measureswho go through access controls and identification work on potential aggressors who have given public signs of dangerousness,” he said.
“Federal regulations must be promoted to identify dangerous students,” he added.
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Manuel Oliver, a publicist and artist of Venezuelan origin who, together with his wife Patricia, decided to use creativity to draw attention to the problem of mass shootings in the United States, will remember his son Joaquín, nicknamed “Guac”, and the other victims of Parkland and other shootings in Washington.
The couple, who are traveling to the US capital in a school bus transformed into a mobile center of activism in favor of gun control, spoke Tuesday in that city that more needs to be done to stop the loss of life than has been done so far.
“Since my son died, more than 225,000 people have been killed by firearms,” Oliver told EFE in an interview over the weekend.
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