In Parkland, Florida, a city ranked by the National Council for Home Safety and Security as the safest in the state, a 19-year-old man took an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, set off the fire alarm, and opened fire on students and faculty members, killing 17 people.[1][2] The shooter discarded his AR-15 semiautomatic weapon, the model used in six of America’s ten deadliest mass shootings and referred to by the NRA as “America’s rifle,” and then fled to a nearby Walmart, where customers can buy rifles and ammunition but cannot purchase music with lyrics that contain the word “fuck.”[3][4][5] US president Donald Trump, who revoked a regulation that was created after a previous school shooting to strengthen restrictions on firearm purchases, tweeted that the FBI had “missed” warning signs about the shooter because it was “spending too much time” investigating his presidential campaign; and a video was published of the gunman firing a weapon while wearing boxers and a hat bearing Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”[6][7][8][9] First responders brought children wounded in the shooting to a hospital in Parkland, which Trump visited before traveling to his private club in Palm Beach to attend a disco party; and the families of several slain children held funerals an hour south of West Palm Beach, where Trump played golf.[10][11][12] A freshman who survived the attack said that she lost two of the “closest people” to her “because of guns,” a junior called for “stricter laws” restricting gun sales, a sophomore said she wanted to ask Trump “why” someone was able to come into her school “and shoot 17 people,” and Trump’s son liked a tweet suggesting that a student who spoke out against gun violence was “running cover” for the Miami field office of the FBI.[13][14][15] Trump tweeted that “classmates” should have reported “signs” that the shooter was “mentally disturbed,” and then tweeted that Russians were “laughing their asses off” at America, that Americans should “remember” a “dirty dossier” alleging that he paid prostitutes to urinate on one another, that he hoped Oprah Winfrey would be “defeated,” and that allegations that he forcibly kissed a woman for two minutes in Trump Tower were false. “Who would do this in a public space?” wrote Trump, who during his campaign said he wouldn’t “lose voters” if he stood “in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and shot someone.[16][17][18][19][20][21]
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