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THE US STATE of Florida, scene of America’s latest school shooting, passed a bill that raises the minimum age to buy firearms to 21 while funding a programme that allows some teachers and school employees to be armed.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which takes its name from last month’s mass shooting in which 17 people including 14 students were killed, passed the legislature’s lower house a day after clearing the senate.
It will now be sent to Governor Rick Scott to sign.
The Republican has not indicated whether he would veto the law, but he has previously expressed opposition to US President Donald Trump’s call to arm teachers.
America’s long moribund gun control debate was revived by survivors of the Parkland shooting, who a day after their school was attacked launched the “Never Again” movement demanding legislative action.
The bill raises the minimum age to purchase all firearms from 18 to 21, a move opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group, bans modification devices that make a semi-automatic weapon fully automatic, and increases mental health funding.
It also includes a voluntary guardian programme named after Coach Aaron Feis who was killed in the Parkland attack, which is intended to “aid in the prevention or abatement of active assailant incidents on school premises” by allowing some school employees to be armed.
The initiative is mainly aimed at staff such as coaches and school personnel, with teachers eligible if they have military or law enforcement experience.
Bringing more guns into school has been a controversial idea, but lawmakers defended the bill.
‘Poison pill’
“I understand the angst about the guardian programme but I can’t help but think about the coaches who literally ran in as shields to protect their students … while guys with guns were standing outside,” said Republican member Chris Latvala.
“If there are school personnel that want to go to the training to help shield the students and protect them, they should have the opportunity,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Democrat legislators said the guardian initiative was a “poison pill” in a law otherwise taking necessary steps towards gun control.
“I’m taking and swallowing that poison pill. As much as I don’t want to, I can’t look in the mirror and leave here and think ‘I did nothing to help’,” said Representative Joseph Geller.
African-American representatives also expressed fears that arming black school employees could leave them vulnerable to being mistaken for attackers by police arriving on the scene of a mass shooting.
Florida has seen three mass shootings in under two years, 49 were killed at an Orlando nightclub in 2016, five at Fort Lauderdale’s international airport in 2017, and now 17 in Parkland.
The bill does not ban the sale of the AR-15 assault rifle, the weapon used by Nikolas Cruz – one of activists’ key demands.
Meanwhile, parents of American children killed in gun violence implored Congress to seize the moment and enact far-reaching gun reform, as the momentum for taking action stalls in politically divided Washington.
With no lawmakers from the controlling Republican Party present, a group of Senate Democrats held a makeshift hearing in the US Capitol to hear testimony from grieving relatives, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, teachers and police officers demanding change to the nation’s laws.
“How many more children are going to need to be slaughtered?” 17-year-old David Hogg asked the senators.
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The rates are going back up but the level of service and overall standard of the hotels have gotten worse
yes especially if you are using a pigsback voucher!
That’s impressive
No doubt NAMA hotels probably loose €10,000 per room.
As a regular hotel user, prices are going up, service is going down, hoteliers are their own words enemy.
I would partially agree with you regarding hotels in Dublin City Centre. I don’t blame the staff though. The work most hotels make their staff do, along with the lengthy shifts are questionably legal at best.
In my opinion, many Dublin City Centre hotels are actually damaging the industry with their extortionate prices. Tourists may stay once, but they wont return at those costs!
10000 profit per room and most staff on min wage with little or no rights And as a long suffering hotel worker belive me thats true in most hotels
Sure look at the Callaghan hotel group that tried to force some of their foreign national workers to sign up for a cut in their minimum wage telling them they couldn’t afford to pay them but at same time were spending 10,000 euro a day in the high court trying to stop unions from stopping them… Some evil folk out there that’s for sure.
Sure half the hotels in dublin are owned by banks so no guesses were all the profits are gone into the pokets of the people who caused this in the first place
Hotel workers should join a union.
Dave, what purpose will that serve? A union can only do anything in the public sector and and even at that they do very very little. Unions have long forgotten their purpose and should be abandoned by every single worker in the public sector. Appoint people amongst yourselves to represent you and save yourself the money of funding the most ludicrous organisations in the country.
The argument is simple, they shd say, we took pay cuts, pay freezes etc when the hotels were in trouble.
Now they are making sky high profits and we want everything that was taken from us back + more.
Yeah the top of most unions are tied to the labour party etc, but I’m not sure about going it alone, it makes a big difference to have a union organiser talk to workers, rather than just starting from scratch.
Anyhow now a days you can join a union online, get your workmates to join the same one (in secret), and get a union organiser to meet them somewhere and take it from there.
exactly, and not just Hotels, they’d go about telling you then “ah business is slack, we’re very quiet, tourist trade is down” and so and so forth. Old Old excuses, total lies. They’ve been playing that card now for 5 years in order to cut wages, staff and feed their greedy mouths.
spot on Ashley, they’re ALL corrupt, right down the line
90% of hotels aren’t making any money, fact.
I could name 10 hotels that people think are “flying” but all with net worth of -€5m, there is no comeback from that, they only showed retained profits of €150k max even during the good times.
Hotels that have valued their assets upwards of €30 million but are worth nothing in today’s market, maybe 5-7m at a huge push.
Anyone with access to CRO figures for hotels will know what I’m on about.
Big hotels with golf clubs that are loosing 500-700k per year but the banks are not willing to move in as it will cost that to maintain the properties per year with the golf courses.
I dislike the idea of the average hotel price included! A separate weekend/weekday average would be needed as I know that the average prices listed above for Dublin are certainly not indicative of an average weekend room rate!
Also to add they now use the per person per room trick rather than room rate.
That’s the end of the recession so, we’ve turned the corner, spread the news
Quick everybody get a second car and a huge mortage we on d mend ha
The editor of the Indo’s property pages just got a semi.
I thought he was detached.
no no, we’re still in recession, we need to cut wages more and more, we still need that excuse to line our pockets, it’s our only hope cos we’re greedy :/
Dublin Dublin Dublin… Yawn.. That big green space West of the m50 will soon be called outer space the way this country is going….
Hotels in fields are you suggesting? I’m confused!
The European presidency filled many hotel rooms, it was a one off ! This should be a warning, next year the figures won’t look so good.
You’re hoping aren’t you?
Not that many, sorry to disappoint.
The EU presidency was in 2013 – this survey was taken in 2012.
That’s great news hopefully the rest of the industry picks up to
Articles like this have the potential to be quite damaging to the hotel industry! It’s not so black and white people!
No surprise there still being ripped off
good news though, keep it coming, its greedy stories like this that tell us all NOT to book a hotel room cos we know their workers are underpaid.
My above point is now proven!
have your say