It’s been a week since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead. And in that short amount of time, the teenage survivors have started a movement to turn up the pressure on lawmakers for gun control reforms.
Florida State Representative Jared Moskowitz says we shouldn’t be surprised by how quickly they mobilized.
“This is what America looks like,” he said. “This is how we’ve brought major change in this country before. Groups have risen up and demanded the system change. It just so happens that it’s kids. Maybe we’re not used to that...but if the adults in the room are failing, then let’s listen to our children.”
On Tuesday, just days after the shooting, Florida lawmakers voted down a motion to take up a bill that would ban assault rifles, reflecting the state’s historical reluctance to enact gun control reforms.
“Florida is, unfortunately, the Petri dish for the NRA,” says Moskowitz.
The legislator urged President Trump to live up to his campaign promise and make America great again. He said the commander-in-chief can’t use pushback from Congress as an excuse for not getting things done.
“Just sign an executive order and ban bump stocks,” he said. “Just sign an executive order and deal with background checks.”
The tech-savvy teenagers of Parkland have leveraged social and traditional media to mobilize people across the country. They’ve organized a national “March for our Lives” protest for March 24.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/florida-state-legislator-partisanship-on-gun-control-wont-cut-it).
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Monday, Dec. 10, 2018.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Times Square is known as the "crossroads of the world," but tell that to Stacey Cunningham. The CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, the first woman to hold the job in the exchange's 226-year history, said it's at the NYSE where capitalism, economics, politics and "the world at large" converge.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Dec. 6, 2018.
Los Angeles is taking a strong stance against single-use plastic straws: the local City Council is moving forward with its "Plastic Straws on Request" initiative with an ultimate goal to phase them out completely by 2021. "This has been a long time coming," Mitch O'Farrell, Los Angeles city council member, told Cheddar Thursday. "I wish that the city had acted 10, 15 years ago."
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018.
Medical marijuana is now legal in Utah, but not exactly in the form voters intended. Shortly after the medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 2, was scheduled to go into effect, the Utah state House and Senate swooped in and replaced it with a new law. Wayne Niederhauser, a Republican senator for Utah's 9th district, defended the move in an interview on Cheddar Wednesday.
Financial markets closed, mail delivery stopped, and federal offices shut down as the nation paused to remember the life of President George H.W. Bush, who will be memorialized during a state funeral at Washington's National Cathedral on Wednesday.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018.
The famously stoic president of France may have conceded on fuel taxes to protestors, but his decision was most likely a product of circumstance, not an act of altruism. In this case, said Erin Zaleski of the Daily Beast, Emmanuel Macron had no one with whom he could negotiate. But small concessions, like a fuel tax moratorium, won't be enough to satisfy protesters who are wreaking havoc in the streets of Paris.
