Parkland parents furious following Texas elementary school shooting
PARKLAND – Parkland parents who lived through the murder of their own young children — and all the gruesome details that followed — incredulous and angry at word of another mass shooting, this time at an elementary school in Texas.
"I'm done. They failed our kids again, OK, I'm done, I've had it," said Fred Guttenberg.
Displaying the frustration of a nation, Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was murdered Valentine's Day 2018, still has more questions than answers four years later. And Guttenberg's not the only curious Parkland parent.
"I don't understand, I don't get it," said Manuel Oliver. "What is it we need to do? Who else needs to die?"
Questions political leaders are too cowardly to answer, Oliver says. His son Joaquin was shot four times and killed at MSD.
"Texas, the land packed with good guys and guns, according to them, so what happens now? Who are we going to blame now?" he said.
An understandably angry Oliver laying some blame of his own, specifically pointing the finger at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as well as Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.
"Marco Rubio called me the day after I lost my son offering me free tickets for family tickets to come over funeral and I said [expletive] you! I don't need free tickets, I need my kid," he said.
Another parent, Max Schachter, whose son Alex was murdered at Parkland eight years after his wife died, is trying to fix the gun problem as a member of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission.
"We've got two common pieces of legislation, the Luke and Alex School Safety Act and the Eagle Act, gives resources to prevent this from happening again," he said.
These Parkland parents believe change is possible. But ending gun violence in this country is still a skeptical belief at best.
"We have a freaking war in our country. We are our own enemies, we provide the weapons for that war," said Oliver.
