As students across the country marked the Florida school shooting with walkouts, Congress delivered its modest response

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

As students staged walkouts nationwide to demand stricter gun control, a month after the school shooting in Florida, Congress offered its modest response: a bill that aims to prevent violence in classrooms – but fails to restrict assault weapons or expand background checks.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed the Stop School Violence Act, in a vote of 407 to 10, marking the first – and perhaps only – action Republican leaders will take in response to the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, which killed 17 and sparked a new youth movement against gun violence. The Senate is considering a similar measure.

'Enough': US students come together in spectacular walkout to end gun violence Read more

“The action that the House just took is an important first step forward in protecting our children, our teachers and other administrators within our schools,” said John Rutherford, a Republican congressman from Florida and the author of the bill.

The legislation would authorize $50m in grant funding for campus safety improvements, including training for local law enforcement and faculty and the development of an anonymous reporting system to identify early warning signs of potential threats.

“It is going to not only harden the target through technology but most importantly I believe it’s actually going to provide the tools and education needed by those in our schools to recognize those individuals who have the propensity to become active shooters,” Rutherford, a former sheriff, said. “That’s what this bill does.”

But the measure is unlikely to quell public uproar precisely because of what it does not do. It does not change a single one of the nation’s gun laws or restrict access to the firearm.

The movement led by Stoneman Douglas students has called forcefully for a ban on assault weapons and other strong gun control measures.



Amid paralysis on the issue in Congress, Donald Trump had initially voiced support for such moves, then made a volte-face. On Wednesday he praised the bill on Twitter, adding: “A tragedy like Parkland can’t happen ever again!”

At a committee hearing in the Senate on Wednesday morning, the Democratic senator Kamala Harris was skeptical about the action in Washington so far.

“I don’t know what we are waiting for. We don’t need any more tragedies … and we don’t need any new ideas. We’ve got great ideas. What we need is the United States Congress to have the courage to act.”

Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator from Florida, called for universal background checks and a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

“I would like to see … any little step that we can get,” Nelson told the committee. “But at the end of the day you’re not going to stop these massacres until you get at these two commonsense things.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young protester demonstrates outside the Capitol in Washington DC. Photograph: Erin Scott/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Outside the Capitol, students at a rally on the lawn called for much stronger measures than the House passed on Wednesday.

“We refuse to learn in fear. We reject turning our schools into prisons. We will accept nothing less than comprehensive gun control,” said Matthew Post, a student at Sherwood high school in Maryland, addressing hundreds gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol, who roared in approval.

“After Parkland, I don’t feel safe going to school any more,” said Jyotsna Bhatnagar, a 14-year-old student at Takoma Park middle school, who carried a sign that said: “A uterus is more regulated than guns”. Bhatnagar said: “Of course we can hide under our desks and lock the doors, but that doesn’t always work.”

Many Democratic lawmakerswalked out of Congress in solidarity and joined the rally.

Inside, the Senate judiciary committee pressed federal officials about the response to prior warnings about the Stoneman Douglas gunman, Nikolas Cruz.

“We made mistakes,” the FBI’s acting deputy director, David Bowditch, said. “That said, I’m not sure we could have stopped the attack. But it sure would have been nice to try.”

In a mark of the compromise represented by the modest legislation, the House bill drew support from both the NRA and a group representing parents of children killed at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut in 2012.