At Vigil For Florida School Shooting Victims, Students Chant ‘No More Guns!’
“Stricter gun laws,” 17-year-old Arianna Ali said about preventing a future tragedy.
A sea of candlelight filled the Pine Trails Park amphitheater Thursday night as thousands of students, parents, teachers and community members attempted to make sense of the senseless.
The vigil occurred just one day after a deadly school shooting left 17 people ― primarily children ― dead. On Wednesday, a gunman stormed into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and began firing seemingly indiscriminately, killing and wounding dozens. Police captured the suspect, a 19-year-old former student.
Students embraced one another in heartbreak at the vigil, sobbing as they listened to speakers and found solace in each other.
But the same children learning to deal with an unspeakable horror didn’t mince words about how this tragedy could have been prevented: gun control.
“No more guns! No more guns!” a sea of chants began at one point, led by students as furious as they were heartbroken.
Arianna Ali, a 17-year-old junior, heard the gunshots and screams of her fellow classmates. She and other students first thought it may have been a fire, she said.
“We started running to the auditorium, and that’s when I heard the gunshots and the screaming,” Ali told HuffPost. “My class just scattered. Me and my best friend ran into my English teacher’s class and hid in the corner for about 35 minutes, but it felt like hours.”
When asked what could have prevented the tragedy, Ali didn’t hesitate.
