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Father of Florida School Shooting Victim Demands Change at White House Listening Session

"We as a country failed our children."

by Blake Harper
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
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Yesterday, President Trump invited parents and students from Majory Stoneman Douglas High School to the White House for a listening session about gun violence. It was an opportunity for them to express their feelings and voice any thoughts and frustrations they have had in the week since the shooting, and presumably for President Trump to listen. Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow was shot to death, chose to use the opportunity to passionately demand real change from Trump, telling the President that “we as a country failed our children.”

“My daughter has no voice. She was murdered last week, shot nine times on the third floor,” Pollack said. “This shouldn’t happen. We go to the airport, I can’t get on the plane with a bottle of water, but we leave some animal to walk into a classroom and shoot our children.”

Pollack lambasted the government for allowing so many school shootings while essentially doing nothing to prevent them. “One school shooting, and we all should’ve fixed it. And I’m pissed! Because my daughter, I’m not going to see again. She’s not here,” he said, raising his voice. “We protect airports, we protect concerts, stadiums, embassies — the Department of Education that I walked in today that has a security guard in the elevator. How do you think that makes me feel?”

While several others who spoke at the listening session called for gun control, Pollack did not explicitly state his view on restricting gun ownership. Instead, he placed his focus solely on keeping schools as safe as possible and said the Republicans and Democrats can “battle it out” over gun control.

While Trump spent most of the session listening to the parents and friends of victims, he did say that he is considering the possibility of arming teachers in an attempt to prevent future shootings.

“An attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes,” Trump said. “It takes five to eight minutes for responders, for the police to come in, so the attack is over. If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly.”

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