Last week, a 19-year-old man murdered 17 people and wounded a further 14 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The school shooting was the worst in the US since Sandy Hook, and has reignited gun control debates across the country. Amongst those discussing the second amendment, students who were actually present at the shooting have been some of the most vocal. Many of them have taken to Twitter to directly confront President Trump about the issue, with one pupil - Sarah - saying: "Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again." Others, however, had the opportunity to stand up in front of a crowd and deliver their thoughts on the matter. Emma Gonzales, a senior at the Parkland school, stepped up during a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale and addressed thousands of people when she said: "Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. "But instead, we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it's time for victims to be the change that we need to see." She continued: "If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and ... how nothing is going to be done about it, I'm going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association. "It doesn't matter because I already know. Thirty million dollars." The 18-year-old was, of course, referring to donations that Trump received from the NRA during his presidential campaign. "To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA - shame on you!" she said. Despite ongoing pleas from victims of shootings and gun control advocates, many in the USA are still insistent that this is a "mental health" or "behavior" problem rather than a gun issue. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/964110212885106689]] However, many people seem to be neglecting the fact that the USA is the single worst developed nation on Earth for mass shootings. In comparison to the UK, for example, 64 per cent of all of America's homicides came as a result of gun violence in 2016, whereas its neighbors across the pond had a rate of just 4.5 per cent. Both nations have proportionate numbers of people with "mental health" problems - but only one of them has strict gun control laws. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/jonsnowC4/status/965214633224175616]] The ease with which people are able to buy guns in the USA is an undeniable problem, but - for some reason - legislators still care more about the second amendment than they do the lives of innocent people. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/BrendonWoodsPD/status/965466727076134913]] "This isn’t just a mental health issue. He wouldn’t have hurt that many students with a knife," Gonzales said to the crowd. "We are going to be the last mass shooting," she said. "We are going to change the law. That's going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook, and it's all going to be due to the tireless efforts of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most importantly the students." Gonzales certainly made an impact on the people at the rally - hopefully, her words will influence those in government, too.

Following the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last week, where 17 people were killed and 15 injured, the debate around gun control has come into the forefront once more. The overwhelming response is that something needs to be done by the American government to prevent massacres like this from happening again, especially when the United States' statistics for gun violence and mass shootings are notoriously bad.

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The US makes up under 5% of the world's population, and yet it holds 31% of global mass shooters. Between 1966 and 2012 there were 90 mass shootings in America, with the country with the nearest figure coming in at 18. When you realize that Americans own 48% of the civilian-owned guns worldwide, it seems that availability is a factor in these shootings.

In light of the massacre on February 14, the survivors and families of those killed have come forward to demand new laws to combat these startling facts.

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While he hasn't exactly been held in high regard by the student survivors currently campaigning for tighter gun control laws, Donald Trump met with victims and families of students caught up in the shooting recently. He told them he was grieving for the deaths, while they begged him to take some immediate administrative action.

Andrew Pollack, a Trump supporter who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow in the attack, had some powerful words for the president:

"I'm very angry that this happened. Because it keeps happening. 9/11 happened once. And they fix everything. How many schools, how many children have to get shot? It stops here with this administration and me. I'm not going to sleep until it is fixed.

"And Mr. President, we'll fix it. Because I'm going to fix it. I'm not going to rest. And my boys need to live with this. I want to see everyone. You, you look at this. Me, I'm - I'm a man, but to see your children go through this, bury their sister. That's what I keep saying because I want it to sink in, not forget about this. We can't forget about it. All these school shootings, it doesn't make sense. Fix it.

"There should have been one school shooting and we should have fixed it. And I'm pissed. Because my daughter, I'm not going to see again. She's not here. She's not here. She's in North Lauderdale King David cemetery, that is where I go to see my kid now. And if we all work together and come up with the right idea, school safety."

However, during this meeting, one photographer caught a snap of a cue card that Trump had been holding throughout the meeting. The card held a list of prompts, including one that read, "I hear you" and "What can we do to make you feel safe?".

For any politician to let cue cards be clearly visible is a PR slipup to begin with, but many criticised Trump for his need to have basic reminders on how to empathize with the victims of this tragedy.

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Trump has said he will have more stringent background checks for those wanting to buy a gun, but also said he was considering the possibility of arming teachers, ideas which fall on either side of the debate.

"We'll be very strong on background checks, very strong emphasis on the mental health of somebody," Trump told the students during Wednesday's televised event at the White House.

"Where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them, they would go for special training and they would be there, and you would no longer have a gun-free zone.

"A gun-free zone, to a maniac, because they are all cowards, a gun-free zone is, 'let's go in and let's attack.'

This is an endorsement of a proposal long put forward by the powerful gun lobbying group the National Rifle Association, who donated over $30 million to Trump's presidential campaign - making him the recipient of the most gun lobby funding of any presidential candidate in history.

The decision, if it will come to pass, has made many wary. This also is a supposed u-turn for Trump, who during the 2016 election claimed that he was not in favor of guns being in classrooms.

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It was also reported recently that Trump asked members about gun control issues at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he spends a substantial amount of time. There are no concealed firearms allowed on the resort, for the record.

Yesterday, at least 17 people were killed and a further 14 were injured after a teenager open-fired at a crowd congregated outside the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, had been expelled from the Parkland school last year, and was captured alive before being taken into custody. Broward County Sheriff, Scott Israel, said that Cruz was believed to have been armed with a semiautomatic weapon, and had come prepared with multiple magazines. He described the crime as a "horrific, detestable act," and added that law enforcement were looking into the teenager's "very, very disturbing" social media profiles in order to give them some idea of his motive. Since then, some images from his Instagram account have emerged, and they are as chilling as Israel warned. Several images show the 19-year-old killer posing with knives and guns, almost always with his face concealed. Other posts show the young man's gun collection, and one image even shows him asking for advice on whether or not he should purchase a particular weapon. "I plan on getting this but I need more information on it so if someone could give advice ... please to god let me know," he wrote alongside the image of a Maverick shotgun. He also commented later on saying that he needed it "for hunting". According to reports, Cruz was a known threat to students at the school. One math teacher, Jim Guard, said: "We were told last year that he wasn't allowed on campus with a backpack on him," adding that, "there were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus." What's more, several students have said that they were not entirely shocked by the revelation that it was Cruz who had committed the horrific attack. Brandon Minoff, a student who had once been in the same classes as Cruz, said that it was "surreal" to hear that the 19-year-old had been named as the shooter, but added that he "wasn't surprised" by the news. "I got paired with him for a project, and he started talking to me about his life — how he was held back twice, expelled from two private schools. He likes to do reckless stuff," Minoff said. "He had aspirations to join the military. He enjoyed hunting." Another student, Matthew Walker, told reporters that "A lot of kids threw jokes around saying that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school. It turns out that everyone predicted it. That's crazy." "He was going class to class just shooting at random kids," Walker said. "Everything he posts [on social media] is about weapons. It's sick." Cruz was also found to have posted several pictures of mutilated animals, and comments traced to accounts belonging to him on YouTube showed that he had made threatening statements about killing people. "I whana [sic] shoot people with my AR-15," said one comment. "I wanna die Fighting killing s**t ton of people," read another. Cruz was even found to have specifically targeted members of law enforcement, writing: "I am going to kill law enforcement one day they go after the good people" in the comments of one video. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/964001372734550016]] This is the eighth school shooting this year in the USA, and has once again sparked discussion about gun laws in the USA. "Are we coming to expect these mass shootings to be routine? And then after every one we say ‘enough is enough’ and then it continues to happen?" said Florida congressman, Bill Nelson, on Wednesday. Five of the people shot yesterday are still in a critical condition after sustaining life-threatening injuries.  

After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, there has been a fierce debate about what action to take to prevent such an atrocity from happening again. The surviving students have demanded new gun control legislation, which is always difficult since so many lawmakers accept millions of dollars from The NRA. Others have suggested focusing on mental health, since the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, was so clearly mentally disturbed.

President Trump has said that he is in favor of stronger background checks and increasing the age requirement to buy a rifle to 21. He has also floated the idea of arming more teachers in schools, which has gotten savage criticism from teachers, an army veteran and even Samuel L. Jackson. "If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly," insisted the President, during a listening session with the surviving students.

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Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School actually did have a school protection officer, Scot Peterson. He was armed with a handgun but failed to prevent Cruz's attack. In fact, while Cruz was shooting students and teachers, he just waited outside. When this was revealed, he resigned from the job. Reportedly three police officers also waited outside, and did not take action until backup arrived. In response to these claims of negligence, the Broward County Sheriff’s office has launched an investigation.

Cruz entered the school with an AR-15, which he purchased legally, and killed 17 people, while wounding 15. Many students ran out of the school. Others who were not close to an exit barricaded themselves in closets to hide. The assistant football coach, Aaron Feis, heroically shielded students from the gunfire, saving their lives, and later died from a gunshot wound. If the teachers were armed, it's possible they could have stopped Cruz' rampage, but it's also possible there would have been more casualties in the chaos.

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However, President Trump is pretty confident about how he would have acted in the situation. In a meeting with the governors, he suggested that he would have stormed inside like John McClane and fought Cruz himself. "You don’t know until you test it, but I really believe I’d have run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon," said Trump. "And I think most of the people in this room would have done that too, because I know most of you. But the way [the first armed police] performed was a disgrace."

Critics expressed skepticism that Trump would act so bravely. During the Vietnam War, he had multiple military deferments, and cited "bone spurs" on his feet to get out of service. Also, he's 71, and according to his latest physical, one pound away from being obese, thanks to a steady diet of fast food. When's the last time he ran anywhere? It's  easy to say how you would act in a situation, but you don't really know until it happens. However, Trump has always been the opposite of modest, constantly claiming to be "the most" this and "the best" that so I guess this statement isn't very surprising.

Earlier this week, we learned the horrible news that a mass shooting had taken place on the premises of a Florida high school. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, an ex-student had opened fire with an AR-15 rifle, killing 17 people and injuring 15 others. Eventually it was discovered that the culprit was 19-year-old Nicolas Cruz, who was arrested and charged after a brief but expansive manhunt in the area. What made this shooting different than the many others that have taken place in the United States over the years, is that the survivors who saw their classmates gunned down are now marching on Washington in a protest against the government's substandard gun control laws. Student Emma Gonzalez gave a speech at a rally at Fort Lauderdale Federal Courthouse, where over a thousand people gathered to discuss the issue. Her speech was incredibly powerful, as she directed her anger towards the lawmakers who often receive donations from the National Rifle Association. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/JoshuaChavers/status/964935557318152192]] "To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you! Shame on you!" she told the crowd. "Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this: We call BS!” One of the survivors of the brutal attack that Gonzalez spoke of in her emotional speech was Anthony Borges. The 15-year-old was shot five times, all to protect the lives of his fellow classmates. Another student, Carlos Rodriguez, told CBS News that he and 19 others only survived because of Anthony's actions during the fateful event. As they heard the gunfire in building 12 of the school last Wednesday, Anthony and his classmates fled to hide in a classroom. The brave teenager was the last of a group of 20 students to enter the room, and was shot as he was trying to lock the door. Despite the fear he surely felt, he held his ground in the doorway and shielded his classmates from the bullets fired by Cruz. No one else in the room was injured because of these actions, for which they are eternally grateful. [[facebookwidget||https://www.facebook.com/browardsheriffsoffice/photos/a.554550794582052.1073741835.159190060784796/2216968471673601/?type=3&theater]] Anthony is currently being treated for his wounds in hospital, where the Broward County Sheriff visited him last weekend. The Sheriff's Office posted a photo of the meeting on Facebook, along with the caption: "Sheriff Israel was honored to visit Anthony Borges, 15, in the hospital today. His family shared that Anthony was shot five times in Wednesday’s school attack. "Fortunately, he is recovering – but has a long road ahead with more surgeries needed. Please join us in praying for the swift recovery of Anthony and all the other victims of this horrific criminal act." Anthony's father, Royer, recalled that Anthony the phone call he received from his son. "He just called me and says, 'Dad, somebody shot me in the back and my leg, too'," he told ABC News, adding: "He's my hero. I only ask that people pray for him". Any tale of heroism like this is incredible to read, but it's all the more astonishing given that he was only 15-years-old, yet put his life on the line without a second thought. We wish Anthony a quick and full recovery.