Again.
And as he stood alongside fellow elected officials at the local and state levels to give the latest, even Governor Rick Scott said the violence has to stop, and he is going to use his authority to do something to prevent something like this from ever happening again in the State of Florida.
You're probably wondering:
So… he's referring to banning high-powered assault rifles?
Or instituting statewide no-fly, no-buy?
Or at least giving up the court fight to keep "docs vs. glocks," a law barring doctors from asking their patients if they keep guns at home, in place… right?
Nope , nope and nope.
He said Thursday afternoon he plans on meeting with Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran next week to talk about putting a few preventative measures in place on "school safety" and mental health before Florida's legislative session ends later this month.
Although it's still unclear whether the suspect in Wednesday's shooting was diagnosed with a mental illness, it was pretty obvious to his classmates that he was disturbed and probably dangerous. Scott said he plans to speak to Corcoran about "how to make sure that individuals with mental illness do not touch a gun."
“I want to make sure that my children and my grandchildren, yours and every person in the state can wake up and be safe," he said. “But the violence has to stop. We cannot lose another child in this country to violence in a school.”
That suggests a split between Scott and President Trump, who last year signed a bill into law rescinding an Obama-era policy that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase guns.
Moments after Scott spoke, Trump commented on the latest mass shooting from the White House but made no mention of that bill or guns at all really, but said the shooter, 19-year-old Nikolaus Cruz, is "mentally disturbed."
At the same podium where Scott addressed reporters in Parkland, Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie addressed the weapons head-on.
“Now is the time to have a… conversation on reasonable gun control in this country,” Runcie said, adding that that he is talking to state lawmakers about allocating “real funding for mental health support for our youth.”
Following Scott's remarks that largely shied away from gun legislation, the group Indivisible Action Tampa Bay sent out a media release noting Scott's A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, the entity that pushes gun-friendly laws and candidates.
He's signed five pro-gun bills into law since becoming governor (including one making it illegal for cities to ban guns in places like parks), and in that time the state has seen more mass shooting-related deaths than any governor's tenure in the state's history.
Indivisible notes how Chris W. Cox, chair of the NRA Political Victory Fund, applauded Scott for having "signed more pro-gun bills into law in one term than any other governor in Florida history," adding that the NRA continues "to count on Rick Scott…”
When polled, some 90 percent of the American public says they support universal background checks for prospective gun buyers, something most Republican lawmakers appear to oppose.
This article appears in Feb 15-22, 2018.