Government Failed Parkland Students Before Massacre, Teen Activist Says
Instead of looking to government for protection and security, Americans should work to preserve and strengthen Second Amendment rights, a student who became an activist after last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, told hundreds of conservative activists Thursday.
Kyle Kashuv, now director of high school outreach for Turning Point USA, a nonprofit youth organization, was a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman opened fire Feb. 14, 2018, killing 14 students and three staff members. Seventeen others were wounded.
“What happened at Parkland wasn’t a gun issue,” Kashuv said during a session on gun control at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, just outside Washington.
Kashuv, 17, pointed to statistics that show crime rates have declined as gun ownership has gone up.
He also expressed frustration that law enforcement officials received multiple reports about earlier behavior by the young man responsible for the shooting, but did nothing.
“Government failed at all levels,” Kashuv said. “Every single level of government knew this could happen. I’m targeting individuals who allowed this to happen. A gun is an inanimate object without someone pulling the trigger.”
For the question-and-answer session called “Disarming the Left’s Hypocrisy: The Fatal Disadvantage of Gun Control,” Kashuv …read more