A Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior said Sunday he doesn’t completely blame law enforcement for missteps surrounding Feb. 14 mass shooter gunman Nikolas Cruz — but thinks the NRA’s response shows it’s “broken.”
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” student David Hogg said “absolutely” mistakes were made ahead of the carnage that killed 17 people, including failure to follow-up tips on Cruz’s troubling behavior.
“Is anything going to change? I certainly hope so,” he said. “But this is something that we can't go back and change now. We just have to look to the future and fix it.”
“You've had an entire generation of kids growing up around mass shootings and the fact that they are… starting to be able to vote explains how we're going to have this change,” he said,, adding, “I think we're definitely critical, especially on social media. And we love to complain about things, we absolutely do. And honestly, trying to fix this issue.”
But he called the National Rifle Association’s opposition to changes in the minimum age to purchase guns, universal background checks and a ban on semi-automatic weapons “disgusting.”
“They act like they don't own these politicians. They still do,” he charged, adding: “The people that are joining the NRA, 99.9 percent of them are amazing people that just want to be safe, responsible gun owners.”
He said the NRA leadership has to be changed.
“In the same way that this is a democracy that's currently broken, the NRA is an organization that is completely broken,” he said.
In the interview, teacher Ashley Kurth, who sheltered 56 students during the rampage, also asserted it'd be dangerous to have guns in schools around children with "very raging passions.”
“I would definitely say not,” she said in answer to whether there should guns in classrooms. “These are kids that have passions, very raging passions. And, when they get into fights or arguments over something on Twitter, or Instagram, or just how their day went and having a bad day and somebody just reacts to them wrong, having something like this in their vicinity is just not a good idea.”
She also said there’s no need for semiautomatic weapons at all.
“I don't feel the need to have that specific type of weapon,” she said. “It's the capacity, the amount that [the gunman] went through in that 7 minutes that we were in there is — is just — unreal.”
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