Hearing about young lives lost to gun violence in another school shooting is a familiar pain in South Florida — particularly for the families of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
"It's a hole in your heart that will never heal," Max Schachter, whose son Alex was among the 17 killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting, said after Monday's shooting in Nashville.
"I am happy that the shooter is not alive anymore," he said, referring to the fact that police in Nashville shot and killed the suspected school shooter there. "Unfortunately, we were not that fortunate. We had to go through a horrible trial."
Schachter listened closely to the news conferences Monday about the six victims killed at the Covenant School.
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“The media asked the police chief, did they have an SRO, a school resource officer? and he said 'no.' It’s a church. And that was very striking," Schachter said. "I think every place of education and learning, where you have children that can't defend themselves, every school needs to have an armed security officer."
NASHVILLE SCHOOL SHOOTING
Manuel Oliver's son Joaquin was also killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
"I was just two days ago with my wife, Patricia, in D.C. fighting against this, trying to get people to understand that this is preventable, so this one hits me on my level of tolerance," said Oliver.
It was on that same trip that Oliver and his wife were escorted out of a house judiciary committee meeting on gun rights following an outburst.
Video showed Oliver being thrown to the ground and arrested in the hallway. But after the arrest, Oliver said he will not be silenced.
"Three babies were murdered today. What are we supposed to do?" Oliver said. "Thoughts and prayers? This is a Christian school. These kids were praying every single day. So it's not that we don't have faith in God. It's that we don't have laws — that’s the problem."
Oliver said he's calling for a national strike from all levels of education "until federal laws occur."
He posted on Twitter, "not fighting back for the next victim of gun violence makes us part of the problem."
