By Breanna Prater
February 15, 2019
February 14, 2018 - the Parkland Shooting - the historic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida where 14 high school students and 3 teachers were killed by a former student, Nikolas Cruz. Atlanta Journal Constitution details the terrible “6 minutes of horror” that killed 17 people and scarred thousands more. As BBC news wrote, the anniversary was marked by a no school day and a 6 minute long moment of silence. This past year, the students of Majority Stoneman Douglas High School turned their tragedy into advocacy. Some of their headstrong methods include the hashtag #NeverAgain, the March for Our Lives in Washington, and advocating for gun control before Congress. However, with the reality of the tragedy sinking in and the advocacy wearing off, one is left with the question “What Changed?”
School shootings have become an unfortunate normality in the United States of America. In the wake of the Parkland Shooting, the surviving students advocated for increased gun control and methods to prevent future school shootings. Advocacy that caused a shift in media coverage, and new policies in Florida, but not a shift in violence. The Miami Herald reports a year long investigation revealing that 1,100 young adults under 18 have died since the shooting a year ago. To put that in perspective, these number equal “a Parkland every five days, enough victims to fill three ultra-wide Boeing 777s.” Parkland was heralded by activists across the country as the mass shooting to end mass shootings. But a year later, that call to action fell short of national change. Yes, 17 memorials honor the lives of those lost, but crickets chirp on the rest of the nation.
Parkland was forgotten. After the initial marches, #NeverAgain fell from the Twitter trends, and never returned. Parkland was heralded as the beginning of the end, but with the 24 hour news cycle and Trumping political rhetoric, the Parkland massacre became another bump in the road. One that continues to haunt the lives of many. NYT recorded stories from several of the survivors a year later and one thing is for certain; the delayed grief has caught up to them. At first the students poured themselves into advocacy, then they attempted to move on - but this denial means that many of the affected students never grieved the tragedy. A year later this pain is catching up to them along with the realization that the changes they enacted were miniscule. February 2019, the nation forgot, nothing changed, and the terror haunts those left behind.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Infuse Student Media or Southwest Baptist University.
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