A mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, left 17 people dead, making it the largest school shooting since the Newtown tragedy in 2012 and the 17th shooting on school property this year. President Trump however, focused on mental health ...
A mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, left 17 people dead, making it the largest school shooting since the Newtown tragedy in 2012 and the 17th shooting on school property this year. President Trump however, focused on mental health and didn't even mention guns in a short address about the tragedy.
Jennifer Hoppe, the deputy director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America joined Salon's Amanda Marcotte and Alyona Minkovski on "Salon Talks" to unpack the horrific event and the lack of political action. Hoppe called mental health a distraction. "The difference in the United States of America is easy access to guns," Hoppe said, mentioning that we don't have higher rates of mental illness than other countries. "We should all take a moment and really think about what it means that Donald Trump and his administration's first impulse in the face of 17 dead people, most of them children, is to find a way to spin this," Marcotte said. To hear more about how the use of social media by students who witnessed the shooting adds a new dynamic to this tragedy, watch the video.