FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ A flier in some mailboxes of a Parkland neighborhood says _ in all capital letters _ "SHOOTING" and "2ND AMENDMENT."
It's an ad for a sporting goods store and a stark reminder of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.
"It's terrible to see the word 'shooting' like that, after we have all experienced a shooting," said Rachel Frydman, whose son was in the same classroom with Carmen Schentrup, who was among the 17 killed Feb. 14 at the Parkland school.
The ad promotes a gun sale at Bass Pro Shops. A company spokesman said the flier was a direct mailing to customers who bought shooting or hunting products in the past 24 months.
"We deeply apologize to anyone who was offended by the shooting sale flier," the spokesman said in a statement late Wednesday.
"Our community is still mourning the loss of Peter Wang," who lived in the MiraLago development, where the fliers were received, Frydman said.
Wang, who died in his Junior ROTC uniform, was credited with holding the door for his fellow students so they could escape the gunman's bullets. He was posthumously admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, was among those killed, wasn't sure he had gotten one at his Parkland home. He typically throws advertising out, he said. But he said he's horrified at what he calls Bass Pro Shops' insensitivity.
No one in Parkland should receive advertising like this, Guttenberg said.
Guttenberg said he reached out to the company soon after the shooting to see whether it would take semiautomatic weapons off its shelves _ a step that Dick's Sporting Goods took. But Bass Pro Shops did not.
He noted that MiraLago is in the same ZIP code as Parkland's high school.
