'President Trump, do something!'
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Teen Killer confesses to killings, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder
President Trump, please do something! Do something. Action! We need it now! These kids need safety now!"
With tears rolling down her face, Lori Alhadeff screamed into a microphone, glared into a camera, and begged the president to address the nation's deadly gun epidemic.
Alhadeff's 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was one of 17 people killed during Wednesday's school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Alhadeff's grief was coupled with anger and a demand for answers.
"How do we allow a gunman to come into our children's school? How do they get through security? What security is there?" she yelled.
"The gunman -- a crazy person -- just walks right into the school, knocks down the window of my child's door and starts shooting. Shooting her! And killing her!"
The United States has once again been forced to confront its deadly distinction as the world's only developed country to be plagued by mass school shootings.
The debate over gun control in America has been polarizing and politicized. As it has gone on, with little resolution, school shootings have continued. Alhadeff challenged Trump to put a stop to the terror and heartbreak.
"President Trump, you say what can you do? You can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands," she said. "What can you do? You can do a lot! This is not fair to our families and our children [to] go to school and have to get killed!"
After a teenager shot dead 17 people in a Florida high school on Wednesday, there is zero indication that the United States is in any way ready to adopt major new reforms to stop such tragedies occurring again.
Trump suggested the root cause of the violence was a crisis of mental health -- and defied calls to address gun control.
The troubled shooter Nikolas Cruz has confessed to the killings at his former high school , court documents showed yesterday, as the FBI admitted it had received a tip-off about the 19-year-old gunman yet failed to stop him.
Terrified students hid in closets and under desks on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, texting for help as the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, appearing Thursday afternoon via video link before a judge who ordered him held without bond. More than a dozen other people were injured in the shooting spree.
In a recurring nightmare that appalls millions of Americans and is unfathomable overseas, the Florida carnage was the 18th US school shooting since January 1. Each year, the country loses around 33,000 people to gun violence.
Yet each time, the event unfolds in the same way.
First come the horrified reactions, then unity in the face of tragedy, followed by outrage, political polarization and then impasse.
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