SUNRISE, Fla. _ Frustration resounded in the voices of many who attended a gun-violence panel discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Monday morning in her Sunrise office.
"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I had to hide behind desks and hold the hands of my classmates, shaking and praying, hearing the gunshots outside of my door," said Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, telling the 28 other panelists about her experience inside the school as a gunman shot and killed 17 of her schoolmates and school staff.
The panelists focused on how to prohibit the sale of semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines.
"Those are the voices and the stories that we need to hear as we make decisions about public policy. We owe it to the world to make a better place for our children," said Broward County School Board member Rosalind Osgood.
Longtime National Rifle Association member Jim Cummings, who attended the discussion, said afterward that politicians who act as puppets for the organization he has been a member of for 50 years should be run out of office.
"The solution is to get rid of some of these politicians who are in the hands of the NRA, and although I'm a life member, I've been a member for over probably fifty years, I can't stand by and watch kids get shot. ... It could have been one of my kids," he said.
The panel also discussed how to improve school safety without arming teachers.
"We need to treat this as the beginning, not the end, of the discussion," Wasserman Schultz said.
