Mass shootings and gun violence are happening way too often

[Smoochie]

I also think another reason this is resonating so loud now is social media.  In the past we may have heard of it, possibly heard some of what was going on and while grasping the horror of what was going on, perhaps didn't comprehend what it was like to live thru it. 

With social media, Las Vegas & this mass shooting showed in live time what was going on,  with the sounds associated to real people and the abject danger and terror of what they lived thru.   When you have war veterans saying the only time they've heard these sounds is in a live battle, it really jams it home!

[fraurosena]

I also think the women’s marches have opened up the public consciousness to the possibilities and effectiveness of protest marches. People are aware again that they actually do have a voice, and they do have the power to potentially disrupt society in peaceful manner, forcing politicians into action.

Because of the growing public anger at the current political climate, the willingness to go out and do something is incredibly high. The turnout at the women’s marches has surprised friend and foe alike and it has cemented a feeling of solidarity Americans haven’t had in a long time.

The GOP and Trumpers have no idea what kind of beast they have awoken!

[fraurosena]

This facebook post will give you chills of both the bad and good variety.

 

[fraurosena]

A heart-wrenching insight into the school-shooting from one of the kids who experienced it.  

 

[fraurosena]

Trey Gowdy showed himself up to be a complete stooge for the NRA. Luckily Nancy Cordes put him in his place quick smart.

News anchor destroys congressman who compares guns to ‘shovels and bricks’

Quote

Republicans are throwing everything they can into resisting taking action on gun violence, but they are being stopped in their tracks again and again by citizens and journalists who have heard enough.

The responses from the right to Thursday’s horrific mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have ranged from cowardly avoidance of the press, to offensive attempts at shifting blame away from gun violence, to absurd leaps of “reason” in order to avoid taking action on guns.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) delivered a prime example of the latter category Sunday morning.

And he was promptly humiliated for his trouble.

During an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Gowdy tried to offer condescending advice to the courageous student survivors who have been speaking out in the wake of the tragedy.

While Republicans have been singularly focused on blaming mental illness, Gowdy hypocritically advised the students to “look at” multiple aspects of the shooting.

“You have to look at the shooter, and you have to look at the instrumentality by which that shooter is killing people,” he said.

Host Nancy Cordes asked if Gowdy was “suggesting that weapons that can kill or injure many people in a short period of time should be more restricted than they are now?”

“Well, you can certainly look at that,” Gowdy replied. “But of course Nancy, some of the more heinous mass killing we’ve had involve semi automatic pistols. And I have had people, when I was a prosecutor, kill with all manner of instrumentality, from shovels to bricks to rope to hands. You’re equally dead. So whether it’s a semi-automatic pistol …”

“Wait a minute, Congressman,” Cordes interrupted. “In Las Vegas, the shooter was able to injure 500 people in minutes. You can’t do that with a shovel or a brick.”

“No, you cannot,” Gowdy conceded, then stammered his way through some more absurd doublespeak about how “you also have to look at the shooter.”

[video of Wanna-be Draco's doublespeak]

Gowdy’s tactic here was disturbingly reminiscent of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s following the Las Vegas mass shooting, when he feigned support for a ban on bump stocks, only to do nothing once the public pressure subsided.

In this case, Republicans like Gowdy will claim an intention to “look at” any number of gun violence provisions while hoping for public outrage to fade, and while still clinging to their absurd talking points about guns.

The key difference, this time, is that the actual survivors of this shooting are speaking out with power and brilliance, and their demands for action are being amplified by a fed-up public and journalists who have heard enough of these lies.

 

[fraurosena]

Cold-hearted callous Cruz is showing true Repugliklan spirit.

Ted Cruz laughs at suggestion of doing anything about gun violence

Quote

Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school is bringing out the cold-blooded worst in Republicans, who are more concerned with protecting the gun lobby than children.

On “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) mocked the very idea of doing anything about gun violence.

When anchor Ainsley Earhardt asked how Republicans should respond to calls for gun control, Cruz laughed.

“The reaction of the Democrats to any tragedy is to start to politicize it,” he said. “So they immediately start calling that we’ve got to take away Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. That’s not the right answer.”

The only “answer” Cruz has offered in the wake of this most recent deadly shooting is a tweet sending his “prayers” to the victims and their families.

[video]

Even after almost 600 Americans were shot in the Las Vegas massacre last October, Republicans refused to even ban the accessory that allowed that shooter to spray bullets at the same rate as a machine gun.

While American children continue to be massacred in our schools, Republicans like Cruz blithely ignore the majority of Americans who support stronger gun control, including shooting survivors like high school student David Hogg.

“What we really need is action,” Hogg said Thursday. “Because we can say, ‘Yes, we’re going to do all these things — thoughts and prayers.’ What we need more than that is action.”

The question is whether Cruz and his colleagues are actually going to listen this time and do something.

To be fair, it's more of a smirk than outright laughing, but by Rufus, he's showing where his heart really lies.

[fraurosena]

This young lady will not be stopped!

 

[fraurosena]

In contrast to Emma Gonzalez, this is how Repugs react when questioned on what they're going to do.

Nauseating, isn't it, to see how cowardly they are? This is the behavior you can buy for only a couple of thousand dollars. 

[fraurosena]

Time to do something, Miami Dade Floridians!

 

[WiseGirl]

From Twitter.....

#NotOneMore 

THREE separate events have been announced to demand gun violence end in America.

March 14: #NationalSchoolWalkout 
March 24: #MarchForOurLives
April 20: #NationalSchoolWalkout 

Please join me in supporting our nation’s children. Sign up at an event near you.

[LeftCoastLurker]

I have no words for this....a youth baseball team (9 years old and under) holding a raffle for an AR-15!

Spoiler

o be clear, in the wake of this nation's most recent AR-15-assisted school murders, third graders in Neosho, Missouri, did not decide to hold a fundraising raffle awarding an AR-15 assault rifle to some lucky town citizen.

It was the adults that did that. The third graders are selling the raffle tickets because the adults around them decided that for them.

The raffle was launched before the shooting, but Levi Patterson, the coach of the team in Neosho for boys 9 and younger, told The Kansas City Star he plans to continue with the fundraiser. [...]

The weapon was donated as a prize by a team father and co-founder of Neosho gun manufacturer Black Rain Ordnance Inc., which is currently pitching a Spec15 AR pistol on its Facebook page.

Nine-year-olds did not suddenly decide to hold a baseball fundraiser featuring an assault rifle responsible for murdering hundreds of schoolchildren and other Americans in recent years. But when the currency of your community is deadly weapons, deadly weapons it will be.

Patterson said “our hearts break” for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But he added that gun raffles “have been going on for years. Evil has and will always exist.”

Patterson said none of the children on his team will be forced to sell raffle tickets for the weapon if they’re uncomfortable doing so.

That's fortunate. There may be a child or two in America who, after watching news coverage of a school very much like their own being turned into a killing field by yet another of the various Americans who woke up one morning and decided that somebody around them needed murdering, in accordance with the core NRA principle that every American be allowed to decide who needs murdering on any given morning—there may be a child or two in America who, after watching news coverage of a horrific murder at a school that looks very much like their own, shudders at handing out fliers asking the adults of their community to try their hand at winning the same weapon. It is good that they can opt out, even if the children of America have absolutely no say themselves in whether their schools, movie theaters, or own living rooms become the sites of their own necessary-for-the-good-of-us-all executions.

At least we are not monsters, here. And who knows? Perhaps the winner of that raffle will be one of the adults who has an idea of who might need killing in their town. Maybe it will be one of the guns we hear about on the news, some future day. Maybe that weapon, too, will become famous.

Republican candidates have long used AR-15 raffles themselves; the latest was just this weekend, and no, they did not delay the raffle after the Parkland mass shooting because why would they.

The NRA has been enormously effective in their campaigns declaring that every American has the right to someday decide that somebody else in their midst, or a dozen others, or 50, deserves on some particular morning to be murdered. What was once a group for sporting and hunting enthusiasts now features constant speeches, videos, and other commentaries declaring that the right to murder other Americans, whether they be neighbors or strangers or officers of the government, based on your own judgment that they need murdering is absolutely inviolate; it shall not be abridged. They have declared it to be the price of freedom; they have declared that so long as the threat of overwhelming domestic terrorism hangs over the rest of the population's head, the government will never lean too heavily on their constituency of someday-murderers.

And so children grow up in this nation handing out fliers for the weapons that are used to regularly murder their peers. This is not something that happens in any other nation. It is something horrifying, in other nations. And yet they are as free as we are—unless you count freedom as the right to decide, yourself, who to murder. They do not. But we, whose idea of freedom now includes bulletproof backpacks, armed schoolyard guards, and regular drills teaching our children where to hide and how to be very, very quiet, do.

 

[fraurosena]

I wonder if they realize they have the world at their feet.

Here’s What It’s Like At The Headquarters Of The Teens Working To Stop Mass Shootings

Quote

At dusk on Sunday night, Cameron Kasky was taking a brief, quiet moment for himself. He lay on a picnic table in a park not far from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where a gunman opened fire Wednesday, killing 17 of his classmates and teachers, and wounding 14 others.

Kasky was exhausted. He estimated that he’d done more than 50 interviews since the shooting, all to promote a movement against gun violence that he and his young friends have spearheaded in the wake of their school’s tragedy.

“We, as a community, needed one thing,” he said of his desire to form the group to give his friends a purpose amid the tragedy.

Kasky, just 17, said he first came up with the name of this new movement, “Never Again,” while wearing his Ghostbusters pajamas.

In just days, the group of teenage survivors have made themselves impossible to ignore, headlining rallies, penning op-eds, and blanketing cable news coverage over the President’s Day weekend with their calls for action.

But behind-the-scenes, they’re also just kids — sitting in a circle on the floor in one of their parents’ house, eating a batch of baked pasta, tweeting at each other, and comparing which celebrity just shared their post. There’s laughter and tears, and “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers plays briefly, but it’s also remarkably businesslike. There’s work to do and a seemingly endless amount of phone calls to answer.

“We slept enough to keep us going, but we’ve been nonstop all day, all night,” said Sofie Whitney, 18, a senior who estimated that she has spent 70% of the past 48 hours speaking with reporters. “This isn’t easy for us, but it’s something I need to do.”

Whitney told BuzzFeed News that “[she] wouldn’t like to return to school until the federal government starts making some progress.” Other student organizers have said the same thing. When asked how her parents might feel about this, Whitney responded, “I haven’t really discussed this with my parents, but I’ll deal with them.”

On Tuesday, the teens will travel to Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital, to push for a change in gun laws. On Wednesday night CNN will air a special town hall meeting with students and lawmakers. The teens also planning the “March for Our Lives,” a nationwide March 24 demonstration that they hope will serve as the movement’s coming out party.

The group, who mostly know each other from the school’s theater program, began their efforts in a scattered way in the chaotic aftermath of Wednesday’s horror.

David Hogg, the 17-year-old student journalist who had interviewed his classmates while they hid from the shooter, went on television the next day, pleading with the country for action. “Please! We are children. You guys are the adults,” he said during a CNN interview that was played across the country. “Take action, work together, come over your politics, and get something done.”

Instead, it was the students themselves who took action.

Kasky began a group text with a few friends that has since ballooned to include as many as 19 participants. Someone built a website, while another person designed a logo. “I’ve been there [in the group chat] since basically hour one,” said Whitney. “Cameron just felt really inclined to make a specific movement. You can’t just make change. You have to be organized.”

On Saturday, they fanned out across the television networks, giving as many interviews as they could.

At a Fort Lauderdale rally, senior Emma González delivered a fiery speech against President Trump and the NRA, which quickly went viral and was seen by millions around the globe. “The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us,” she told the crowd through tears. “And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call B.S.”

By Sunday night, as their names and movement trended worldwide, the teens regrouped in a makeshift “headquarters” in a living room. Some of the students hold leadership positions at their school so they’re used to planning committees and meetings. (As people online tweeted that González should run for president, she joked that she already is president — of her school’s Gay Straight Alliance.)

Although the room was big, the students worked closely together on a rug, making decisions communally. When media outlets rang to schedule interviews, the calls were sometimes put on hold so the group could plan and schedule collectively, as if they’ve been doing this for years.

Occasionally, the trauma from Wednesday bubbled up again. At one point that day, a student had a panic attack, while another later cried on the floor.

John Barnitt, 17, could still recount seeing classmates “dropping their backpacks and kicking their flip flops off to run faster way from the crime scene.” It was only when he found his mom, who was waiting with what he described as “eager, tear-filled eyes,” that he felt safe.

Like the other organizers, Kasky said that the activism was his method for coping with the grief. “Unfortunately the bad feelings, and the reminders of everything that’s happened are coming at all the wrong times,” Kasky told BuzzFeed News.

In these moments, the group repeated a mantra, reminding each other that they were doing this for the students — their classmates — who died on Valentine’s Day. They don’t want this to happen to other “kids,” they said, as if they weren’t kids themselves.

The week ahead is mapped out on whiteboards that were purchased at Target. On the boards are the names of the organizers, with their commitments for the week, and green tape dividing the days in makeshift fashion. Major news network appointments are mixed in with the times of funerals.

As others answered phone calls, Jaclyn Corin, the 17-year-old in charge of logistics for the Tallahassee event on Wednesday, worked on a press release about the event — although she referred to it as “an essay.” The teens are planning to meet with Florida’s attorney general, House speaker, and Senate president. “REMEMBER: THIS IS ALL AT A STATE LEVEL,” Corin wrote in capital letters in the final press release.

Around 10 p.m., concerned parents began to call. One student mentioned she was supposed to be home at a certain time, while another negotiated with his folks, who seemed to be telling him to get more rest.

After people left and the night finally ended at 11 p.m., Hogg tried to go to sleep. He played “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio in a bid to unwind. In a few hours, he had to be awake. He had another interview to do.

 

[kacarlton]

Food for thought.
How Banks Could Control Gun Sales if Washington Won’t
https://nyti.ms/2BDEETG

[fraurosena]

What.the.fuck?

 

We shouldn't be surprised they're attacking the survivors, when the victims of school shootings are nothing but so much collateral for the NRA.

 

[GrumpyGran]

Well, this is exposing the NRA for the thugs that they truly are. It's nauseating that these legislators have sold their souls for a few thousand dollars. It shows the depths they will go to the keep their powerful positions. Think about this, they are not even allowed to promise to consider gun legislation. We know that it would go nowhere but they can even pretend or the NRA will punish them.

They are so desperate to get elected to office that they have sold whatever self-esteem they had. I have to think that this has to do with gaining advantages for their friends and family while they are in a position of power.

So you have no skills except as a bullshitter and you decide to run for political office. Cozy up to the NRA and they'll help you. A little bit of money, because you're unproven but they'll endorse you. But then they own you. You must be their mouthpiece. And if you balk they won't just pull your money, they'll endorse your opponent and spread lies about you. Or worse, expose some truths that you weren't aware they even knew.

[fraurosena]

Insightful article from the LA Times:

No one becomes a mass shooter without a mass-shooting gun

Quote

Look, it's really simple: Mass shootings will continue in this country until we finally ban mass-shooting weapons.

The more bullets a gun can fire rapidly, the more people will die. Pretty basic stuff. We don't need to twist elementary logic into a contortion. Anyone who doesn't understand this is probably a firearms addict in denial.

Let's be clear: I'm not anti-gun. I grew up shooting, have owned firearms all my life and enjoyed them. I'm pro-common sense.

There's absolutely no reason to possess a semiautomatic, military-style rifle with large-capacity ammunition magazines except to kill lots of people within a few minutes. It's not a good hunting weapon. And for personal protection, you're better off with a 12-gauge shotgun or a handgun. Of course, with those weapons at home, you also might shoot a family member or yourself.

Sorry, but all these gun killings and the national politicians' inaction afterward are getting old and repetitious. It's like the movie "Groundhog Day." Regarding movies, yes, too many flicks extol gratuitous violence and sow evil seeds in vulnerable kids' minds. Video games are worse. But again, no one in real life becomes a mass shooter without a mass-shooting gun.

Immediately after last week's South Florida school shooting that left 17 dead and 14 wounded, there was the usual strained finger-pointing at the lack of mental health treatment. Baloney!

Sure, anyone who murders is a wacko. But that doesn't mean they're clinically mentally ill. No more than 5% of all violence is committed by the mentally ill, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Firearm Violence Research Center. Certainly there should be better mental health care. The suspect was a troubled 19-year-old ripe for therapy.

Nikolas Cruz had been kicked out of school and his mother had just died. Even before that, he reportedly had tormented neighbors — bit a kid's ear, threw eggs at a car, shot chickens with a BB gun. He'd posed with guns on Instagram and declared on YouTube: "I'm going to be a professional school shooter."

He probably couldn't have shot 31 victims with a six-shooter or pistol holding nine rounds. He would have needed to pause to reload, giving his former schoolmates a few seconds to flee or jump the guy.

Instead, Cruz went to the high school armed with a weapon of choice for mass killers: a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle — the civilian knockoff of the military M-4 — and several magazines. He had bought the weapon legally in Florida, which has weak gun laws.

More of the country should be following California. We banned the sale of such assault weapons many years ago.

In 2016, we took another big step. The Legislature passed a bill and the voters overwhelmingly approved a separate ballot initiative outlawing the possession of magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

But attorneys for the National Rifle Assn. persuaded U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez of San Diego to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the large magazine ban. The California Rifle and Pistol Assn. argued that the ban violated 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms and also protections against government seizure of property without due process or compensation.

Nonsense on the first count. The late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2008 opinion affirming the right of individuals to own firearms: "The right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. … The right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."

The gun lobby's second count was on target: The state government shouldn't be forcing citizens to surrender their ammo magazines without compensation. If the state wants the magazines, it should buy them.

California and every other state should do a better job of detecting potential killers and seizing their guns. Cruz was waving red flags. The FBI didn't see them.

Someone close to Cruz called FBI officials last month to report that he had purchased a firearm, threatened a family member and posted scary messages on social media. But proper "protocols were not followed," FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged.

A California law allows immediate family members and law enforcement to seek a gun violence restraining order against someone suspected of being dangerous. If granted by a court, the order forces the person to temporarily turn over his firearms. That might have helped in South Florida.

Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) got a bill passed two years ago that also would have permitted school staffs, co-workers and mental health specialists to seek a restraining order. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill, saying it was "premature" because the original law had only been in effect a short time.

Now Ting says he'll reintroduce the bill. "More time has passed and we've seen more and more shootings in schools and workplaces," the lawmaker says.

What Congress should do — and won't as long as Republicans and the NRA control Washington — is ban the mass-shooting weapons. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein tried to do that with a 1994 bill that expired 10 years later. The politicians refused to renew it.

"Now guns are more powerful. High-capacity magazines are now larger. And even bullets are more destructive," Feinstein says. "We become culpable when we do nothing to stop it. ... I'm tired of children getting shot."

But too many of her colleagues never get tired of pandering for gun lobby support.

 

[fraurosena]

Huh. I guess he listened to the advice of his guests at Mar-a-Lago then.

Although this is a good thing, it's not nearly enough. I don't think Nikolas Cruz used a bump stock last week, and look at how many kids he managed to kill anyway. 

[fraurosena]

Sickening, saddening, shameful.

 

[onekidanddone]

Wait Drudge or Britebart or even  Sean Hannity to toss themselves on a fainting couch. I'm a rather bitter and jaded (yea, you all know that) person. This ban was not done out of compassion. No, it is purely to make  himself look good. Look for him to flip-flop just as he has done with DACA.

[onekidanddone]

31 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Sickening, saddening, shameful.

 

I'm sick of hearing about teenagers being phone obsessed, self absorbed and shallow. Well, yea it seems as if they are always texting, but that is how their generation communicates these days. My nephew and two oldest nieces are 23, 23 (cousins not twins) and 20. All are fiercely tuned in, politically progressive, and unafraid to speak out. My youngest niece is 17, and is the mad scientist type, so who the hell knows what is going on in that head. I'm watching my kid at 14, bit by bit becoming more aware. She can be very introverted when not within her comfort zone of close friends. However seeing the seeds start to bloom is awesome.

[candygirl200413]

Did anyone see this? 

How is this all afforded?! Why is this a thing?!

[GreyhoundFan]

8 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

How is this all afforded?! Why is this a thing?!

It's Indiana. Remember, Pencey was governor and made sure to cut as many social programs as possible.

[fraurosena]

Have these people collectively lost their minds? Their moral convictions have more priority than kid's lives? I can't say WHAT.THE.FUCK.YOU.FUCKING.MORONS!!!! loudly enough to convey my feelings on this.

Florida House declares porn a public health risk shortly after denying assault rifle ban

Quote

Florida lawmakers on Tuesday passed a resolution declaring pornography a public health risk, less than an hour after they rejected a motion to consider a bill that would ban assault rifles.

The Florida House of Representatives opened its Tuesday session with a motion to debate a bill banning assault rifles, which it rejected by a 36-71vote within three minutes, according to the Washington Post.

In the same session, less than an hour later, according to the newspaper, the legislature considered a GOP-backed bill to declare porn a public health risk, which it passed by a voice vote.

During the debate, State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D) questioned State Rep. Ross Spano, the GOP lawmaker who presented the pornography bill, asking if pornography has killed anyone or caused first responders to seek counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Smith later criticized Spano and the bill to the Associated Press.

“[Spano] was saying porn as a health risk was more important to address here in the Florida Legislature than the epidemic of gun violence," Smith told the AP. "These are their priorities. I don't understand the politics, to be honest, if I'm being honest. I'm not aware there's a base of voters who are losing sleep every night over the epidemic of pornography as a public health crisis."

Survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were present in the gallery watching while the lawmakers voted not to consider the ban on assault rifles, and many have since intensified their calls to vote the lawmakers out of office.

Sheryl Acquaroli, a junior from Stoneman Douglas, told CNN that the lawmakers’ decision to not consider the assault rifle ban was “heartbreaking.” Police say the gunman used an AR-15 assault rifle, purchased legally, to kill 17 people and injure 14 others at the school last Wednesday.

“It was just so heartbreaking to see how many names were up there, especially after it was my school,” Acquaroli said. “It seemed almost heartless how they immediately pushed the button to say no.”

 

[onekidanddone]

I'm sure Orange Shit Stain and Fox Spews will demean and degrade these brave young men and women.  I for one feel proud.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"A lawmaker’s aide called school-shooting survivors crisis actors. Within hours, he was fired."

Spoiler

A Florida legislator’s aide was fired Tuesday after claiming two survivors of the Parkland high school shooting were not students, but instead “actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

Benjamin Kelly, who worked as district secretary for state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa), sent an email to a Tampa Bay Times reporter about Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, two Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who had given an interview to CNN.

Gonzalez and Hogg survived the Valentine’s Day massacre at the school that left 17 people dead and dozens of others wounded. Appearing on CNN early Monday morning, the students called for disbanding the NRA and for stricter gun-control laws.

“The fact that you were in power for so long, that you had so much influence for so long in America just goes to show how much time and effort we still need to spend on fixing our country,” Gonzalez said of the NRA. “And gun control is just the first thing right now.”

... < video >

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Kelly sent an email to the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief, Alex Leary, writing that the two teens “are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

When the Times asked Kelly to support his claim, he sent a link to a YouTube conspiracy video about Hogg.

“There is a clip on you tube that shows Mr. Hogg out in California. (I guess he transferred?),” Kelly said in the email, according to the newspaper.

An article published in the Coral Springs Talk on Feb. 8, six days before the shooting, named Hogg as a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas and featured a documentary he made about efforts by astronomy students to launch a weather balloon and an attached craft into space. Gonzalez was featured in the video as the project’s tracking team leader.

After the exchange with Kelly, the Times contacted Harrison, who said: “If my aide disparaged a student from Parkland who is grieving then I will deal most strongly with my aide. … Clearly it was inappropriate for him to send that.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Harrison tweeted that Kelly was put on leave.

Less than two hours later, he said that Kelly had been fired. Harrison also apologized to grieving families for Kelly’s comments.

... < tweets >

Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran said he was “shocked and angry” after reading Kelly’s comments.

Corcoran, a Republican, said he fired Kelly, with Harrison’s “full support.”

“On behalf of the entire Florida House, I sincerely apologize to the students targeted and again commend them for their courage through this unspeakable tragedy,” Corcoran tweeted.

Kelly also took to Twitter, and said he had made a mistake.

“I’ve been terminated from the State House,” he wrote. “I made a mistake whereas I tried to inform a reporter of information relating to his story regarding a school shooting. This was not my responsibility. I meant no disrespect to the students or parents of Parkland.”

He later tweeted: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

His Twitter account later appeared to have been deleted altogether.

... < tweet from Rubio >