The kids wanted the adults to ban assault weapons, which caused such bloody devastation at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Most of their teachers wanted to quash the idea of armed educators in Florida schools. The Florida Senate crushed both those hopes on Saturday, rejecting the weapon ban, and supporting arming teachers, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports. Stoneman Douglas student Jackie Corin, who organized 100 of her fellow students to come to Tallahassee last week, tweeted: “The Florida Senate has rejected the ban of AR-15s, the weapon of choice used at my school to kill 17 souls. This breaks my heart, but we will NOT let this ruin our movement. This is for the kids.”
The Republican-led Senate also killed compromise measures, such as a gun ban within five miles of a school, a moratorium on assault weapons, or even a moratorium just on the AR-15, the type of semi-automatic rifle used in the Stoneman Douglas shooting. The bill would alow some teachers to be armed. That would be optional, with school district superintendents and sheriffs having to agree to it, and teachers needing to volunteer. It would make bump stocks illegal, make it a second-degree felony to threaten to commit a mass shooting or terrorist attack in a way where others can see the message, such as social media, spend tens of millions on school security measures such as bulletproof glass and single-point-of-entry systems, plus more than $100 million on mental health programs for students, and ban gun sales to those under 21.