On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan
This February 14th, the United States will be marking a tragic anniversary. It has been one year since 17 students and teachers were killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
While likely the survivors, friends and families of those killed can viscerally recall every detail of that day, far too many Americans do not. School shootings happen so frequently now. Those of us who were not there confuse the faces of the killers, and rarely remember the names of the innocent victims.
We have become so inured to these massacres that we are conditioned to question the death toll before we even know the facts of the case. As soon as one person says: “There was another shooting at a school,” the immediate response is: “How many killed?”
The reporting of the casualty count after a mass shooting drives the round-the-clock news stream. For those of us watching, the death toll becomes akin to a video game score. And that is an important part of the problem. We shake our heads, complain about legislators not doing anything about guns, and then we move on to sports. Mass murder has become as common as a weather report.
The arms sales go on, and the money continues to flow from the gun lobbyists to our representatives. This process repeats with each subsequent shooting.
Incomprehensibly, in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre, just as with Sandy Hook and Columbine, the sale of semi-automatic weapons increased between 2%-3%. It’s as if the shooting of children serves as an advertising campaign for gun manufacturers. How else is it possible that someone hears that a particular weapon killed children, and is immediately continue reading: Badass Teachers Association: On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan