Vice President Kamala Harris toured the site of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting Saturday afternoon, one of the last visits before the building, untouched for six years, is demolished this summer.
Later, she announced a new project related to state red flag laws and called on more local governments to use them.
Guided by Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor, Harris accompanied victims’ families, U.S. Representative Jared Moskowitz, and members of the State Attorney’s Office through the building’s blood-stained halls, left nearly identical since the day of the shooting that killed 17 people on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
They showed her the classrooms where students had outdated laptops open, now gathering dust, the half-eaten snacks. The doors that didn’t stop the shooter’s bullets. The white board that read “no excuses allowed.”
“The families, so rightly, have been so injured by this,” Harris said afterward in a news conference in the school’s gymnasium. “Those injuries that in cases of violence like this are seen and obvious and also invisible.”
Behind Harris, on the gymnasium’s wall, was a plaque for the school’s 2017 state tennis champions; one of the names read Chris Hixon, the school’s athletic director, who died while confronting the shooter. His wife, Debbi, and son, Tom, stood behind Harris on Saturday, as did family members of Gina Montalto, Helena Ramsay, Jaime Guttenberg, Luke Hoyer, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, and Alyssa Alhadeff. Several parents held yearbook photos of their children.
Throughout her 14-minute speech, Harris kept repeating the phrase, “frozen in time.”
“The moment is frozen in time,” she said, “where there was, in the classroom that was known for having a teacher that was pretty strict, the teacher relented to the students that said, ‘Hey, can we be a little bit more informal today?’ And instead of having the desks lined up in a row, they had them pointed to face each other.”
The vice president’s arrival joined several visits to the 1200 building by government officials in recent months:
In August, U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami-Dade County Republican and senior member of the Florida congressional delegation, co-hosted an congressional visit with Moskowitz, who represents Parkland and attended Stoneman Douglas. He became an advocate for gun safety after the shooting. He is currently co-chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.
In September, state Sen. Ben Albritton, the Republican who will become president of the Florida Senate after the 2024 election, took a two-hour tour of the site, along with state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who will become the Democratic party leader in November.
In November, Moskowitz led five more members of Congress on a tour of the site.
This past January, two federal officials visited: the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director.
Each walked past the unfinished assignments on dry erase boards, boxes of candies, abandoned teddy bears, and shards of glass. Some families have said that they want government officials to tour the site in hopes that it will influence their policy decisions.
“It’s important to bring people through the building,” Tony Montalto, the father of Gina Montalto, told reporters afterward. “So they can see, not only the horror that exists there, but so we can point to the exact thing that failed.”
As they walked through the building, he said, they pointed to the locations of where each student was shot, told the vice president not only how they died but who they were. Harris also met with each family individually, where Montalto said they shared stories of their loved ones and spoke about the different projects they have undergone in the years since.
Harris appeared struck by what she saw inside.
“The way we have constructed schools is based on the only potential emergency being a fire,” she said.
Harris, who oversees the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, also announced the launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which will train states in implementing red flag laws, “information about the concern and about the potential danger, or the crying out for help of an individual,” she said. “And then let’s get it to them before a tragedy occurs.”
Red flag laws allow law enforcement to petition courts to remove guns from those who pose a threat to themselves or others, and seek to prevent those people from purchasing guns in the first place. Many states have red flag laws but have not used funding provided by the federal government to implement them, the White House official said. Still others have no red flag laws.
Florida has red flag laws, but recent events have underlined their shortcomings. A man who died after barricading himself in a Fort Lauderdale hotel room on Thursday and exchanged gunfire with police had a long history of domestic violence and mental health issues, records show. He had his guns confiscated under the state’s red flag law in 2022, but they were returned to him after the risk-protection order expired in 2023.
Harris’ visit during an election campaign produced political reaction and counter-reaction, including among the parents and families of the Parkland victims.
Online, over 500 signers of a Change.org petition demanded that Harris cancel her visit, arguing it “would only serve to bring back traumatic memories for those affected by this tragedy” and could turn the “solemn site into an unwanted spectacle.”
The building “is not meant to be used as a political tool or tourist destination,” the petition said, adding that Harris could have visited previously and asserted she “obviously is choosing election year to further an agenda.”
Ryan Petty, father of Alaina Petty, 14, who was killed in the shooting, told Fox News he a few weeks ago joined the Secret Service, including its director, at Stoneman Douglas High, where he and others “walked them through what happened that day.” He called that a “good visit” that “didn’t involve the press” and “it wasn’t an opportunity for anyone to do a photo op.”
Others disputed that version of events and said the vice presidential visit is positive, and could lead to action that helps prevent future school shootings. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was murdered at her school, wrote Saturday on social media that he had asked Harris to visit. He was among the family members of victims accompanying her.
“The blood, DNA, broken glass, course work on desks left unfinished and other remnants of the mass shooting incident will still be there,” he wrote on X. “That Vice President Harris and her team are walking through this building with us to learn the lessons of why this happened and what could have been done to prevent it, as well as what we can do in the future to prevent gun violence, and also to prevent mass carnage when gun violence happens is a big deal. This will be a hard day for all of us. However, it is done with the intention of stopping the next one.”
Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed at the school, and who joined Harris on Saturday, said he had asked many officials to attend, and is glad Harris is “taking time to come to Parkland to bear witness to what happened to my little boy. This is not a political visit. She is the Vice President of the United States and she has an obligation to come to Parkland.”
“There is no way to replicate what one sees and experiences when they walk through the site of the Parkland school shooting,” he added. “It profoundly affects people. They emerge determined to prevent another tragedy. … I couldn’t save Alex, but every time an official walks through the building lives are saved, and schools are safer.”
Montalto told reporters Saturday that he hoped more people would come together and focus more on the solutions, regardless of who is in charge.
“Unfortunately, I think anytime that president or vice president goes anywhere it’s seen as politics,” he said. “However, there’s no real political reason why we shouldn’t hope that the Office of Gun Violence Prevention does the best they can to prevent gun violence in the nation’s communities.”
Much of the gun safety legislation he supports has bipartisan support, he pointed out, adding that “the middle needs to be heard.”
Also on Saturday, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, who was governor at the time of the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre, touted his response at the time — and criticized what he said was the push by Biden and Harrris for “nationwide implementation of radical policies” on gun violence.
He cited the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Act enacted in the aftermath after he said he consulted with mental health, education and law enforcement professionals and families of victims. He faulted what he called the “the Biden-Harris administration’s push for nationwide implementation of radical policies, like California’s red flag law,” which he said was an unacceptable infringement of constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.
A small group of protesters also gathered outside of the school to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, pictures on social media show, holding signs reading “MSD students demand a ceasefire” and “Students here and in Gaza deserve to live.”
