A parent of a child killed in the Parkland School shooting has criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for using the scene of the massacre for a “photo op” to “push” a gun control agenda.
Ryan Petty’s 14-year-old daughter, Alaina Petty, was killed along with 16 others in the 2018 Parkland School shooting in Florida, when former student Nikolas Cruz, 19, went on the rampage with a semi-automatic AR-15 style. rifle.
Democrat Harris visited the school on Saturday and gave an emotional speech promoting “red flag laws” before paying her respects at a memorial for the victims.
Petty called the visit a “slap in the face” for the families of the shooting. He said: ‘I find the whole thing offensive’.
He told Fox News: “What they want to do is create an opportunity for the vice president to spout talking points about gun control in a place that, frankly, is hallowed ground at this point.”
Ryan Petty called Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit a “slap in the face” for the victims’ families
Petty’s 14-year-old daughter, Alaina Petty, was killed in the 2018 Parkland School shooting in Florida
Vice President Kamala Harris walked past grieving parents holding photos of their children to deliver her speech at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
The school has remained completely untouched since the Valentine’s Day shooting six years ago due to a series of criminal cases, including that of the school’s deputy sheriff, Scot Peterson, who was acquitted last year on charges that he failed to arrest Cruz .
The teachers’ papers are left on their desks, along with the students’ open laptops, half-eaten snacks and homework.
Bullet holes pepper the doors next to overturned chairs and items thrown away in the panic to get out.
The building will be demolished this summer, but politicians and security services have now visited to see what went wrong and how it can be prevented from happening again.
Petty told Fox News, “What’s frustrating to me is that this building should have been demolished years ago, and now it’s being used as a photo opportunity for politicians trying to push an agenda.
“But politicians honestly don’t understand what it takes to protect our nation’s schools. They don’t understand the causes of the tragedy in Parkland.
“They don’t understand what led to the tragedy and are only there to push their gun control agenda. I’m tired of it. It has to stop. The building must be demolished.’
Petty shared a photo of Harris’ visit and wrote on X: “Never let a tragedy go to waste, they say.”
Petty disputes politicians’ position that gun control is the only way to keep schools safe. He says there are “many ways” children can be protected without “violating Second Amendment rights.”
He said, “But the Vice President and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention don’t want to hear any of these solutions.
Petty tweeted after her visit, “Never let a tragedy go to waste, they say.”
PARKLAND SCHOOL VICTIMS: Top row L-R: Jaime Guttenberg, Nicholas Dworet, Martin Duque, Meadow Pollack, Cara Loughran — Second row L-R: Alyssa Alhadeff, Luke Hoyer, Joaquin Oliver, Gina Montalto — Third row L-R: Alaina Petty, Carmen Schentrup , Peter Wang, Alex Schachter – Fourth row L-R: Helena Ramsey, Scott Beigel, Aaron Feis, Chris Hixon
Harris toured the pristine classrooms and visited a memorial to the victims
“I will continue to advocate for what we need to do on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban,” Harris told her audience
“It’s an insult to the families who have worked so hard to make our schools safer in the state of Florida and schools safer across the country. She’s just spitting in the face of all that work because she wants to promote gun control.”
Petty said they have had a number of successful visits to the school, including a Secret Service visit a few weeks ago.
He said he showed them the English classroom where his daughter was shot and that she had nowhere to hide.
He said, “I showed them where she was sitting and they saw that she couldn’t get into a safe space in that classroom, a space where the shooter couldn’t see her. These are all things that I hope the vice president takes away.”
Cruz was sentenced to life in prison for the shootings.
He had recently been expelled from the school and fired 140 shots as he prowled the school building during his six-minute attack.
He bought his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle a year before the murders and told his trial about seven months in advance that his plans became serious when he researched previous mass shooters, saying he tried to learn from their experiences to learn.
But he had been thinking about an attack for five years and said he chose Valentine’s Day to ensure it would never be celebrated at school again.
Jurors followed Cruz’s path as he methodically walked from floor to floor, darting through hallways and classrooms
Nikolas Cruz was seen on security footage carrying out his rampage in 2018.
Students were told to keep their hands up as they fled the school in panic
He bought ten guns when he turned 18, but no action was taken by local police or the FBI over reports that he was planning a mass shooting.
The FBI received two warnings about his behavior: one from a member of the public who watched a YouTube video he made in which he said he would become a school shooter, and the second — weeks before the attack — from a family friend.
He became the most prolific school mass shooter to stand trial after surviving the attack and was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in 2021.
Florida is one of 21 states that passed “red flag laws” in the wake of the killings, allowing courts to confiscate guns from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
Harris was in Florida to urge more states to adopt the legislation and announce the creation of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center.
“Of all the states that have passed red flag laws, only six have responded to the offer we made through our federal government to help them with the training and implementation of these red flag laws,” she said.
“This National Resource Center will be a place where we will provide training to local leaders on how to use red flag laws and keep communities safe.
Not all parents and families were concerned about Harris’ visit. Beigel Schulman, whose 35-year-old son Scott was killed while trying to get students to safety from his geography class, said, “She understands how important gun violence prevention is to us.
“But when you go into the building itself and see what really happened, it doesn’t matter that it’s six years later, it really does something to you.”