Parkland: Birth of a Movement

by Dave Cullen

major reforms to the easy access to deadly weapons and ammunition; a targeted approach to mental health in the form of screening for teen depression, every semester, in every high school in the country; and a major change in the media’s coverage of these killers, which lionizes them in the eyes of unraveling future perps.

They quickly developed five demands—and they called them that—(1) universal, comprehensive background checks; (2) a digitized, searchable database for the ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives); (3) funding for the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence; (4) a ban on high-capacity magazines; (5) a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles. Not one of them was specific to mass shooters or schools.