On February 14, 2018 there was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Nikolas Cruz was responsible for taking the lives of 17 people, and injuring many more physically, mentally, and emotionally. He was seen posting pictures of guns in his hands days before the shooting. Cruz’s classmates said he often joked about guns, but no one found it funny just a little suspicious.

Everyone that knew Cruz knew his fascination for guns and violence. According to some of his classmates, he kept a semiautomatic, in a lockbox, in is room. Whenever Cruz arrived at school people noticed how he wasn’t supposed to be at school because he was expelled for an unspecified reason.

When Cruz walked into the school he pulled his AR-15 out of the bag he brought it in. He didn’t show up at normal school time, he showed up near the end of the day; 10 minutes before the end of the day bell to be exact. Cruz pulled the fire alarm, so everyone got out of class in the hallway to go outside. Once Cruz saw the first kids he started shooting, so then everyone heard the shots and panicked.

Nikolas Cruz had recently lost his mother. This may have contributed to why he decided to shoot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He was also violent and autistic.  A 19 year old boy that hasn’t even graduated from high school should not be able to own guns.

One way to prevent this is to have stricter gun laws. If the law was different , Cruz would not have been able to buy a gun. Another way is to ban AR-15 rifles and guns like it. An AR-15 is a military grade assault weapon. It has no purpose in the hand of civilians. Assault Rifles should no longer be sold in guns stores. We think anything that is not a pistol or shotgun should not be able to be purchased anywhere that guns are sold.

This was also caused by depression and mental health issues, Nikolas Cruz battled mental health issues and struggled through school. That is nothing to make  fun of and people all over the world have been battling and people lose their lives all over the world to suicide and depression with mental health issues. If we can notice the signs of depression we can help them and be there for them before anything happens

There are also other ways to prevent mass shootings because people who usually cause these shootings show signs like Nikolas Cruz did but nobody took him seriously, people ignore these signs and did not report anything because they thought it was all a joke. These types of stuff are not jokes because they hurt families and friends with the loss of other children.