America’s deadliest high school shooting in history will be reenacted Friday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as part of a lawsuit against a former sheriff’s deputy who failed to intervene while 17 people were gunned down inside.
At least 140 live rounds of bullets will be fired inside with the aim of determining whether the former deputy, Scot Peterson, has a viable defense in claiming that he stayed outside the building because he couldn’t determine where the gunshots were coming from. He was found not guilty in June of criminal charges of felony child neglect, culpable negligence, and perjury. But he could still face liability in the civil suit brought by victims’ families and a survivor.
Their lawyers have indicated that they intend to use the same type of semi-automatic rifle and caliber of cartridges used by the shooter and would also sound the fire alarm as part of the reenactment. No students will be on campus Friday while it’s underway.
Whether or not Peterson’s defense has merit, his failure to neutralize the shooter raises a familiar sticking point in the gun control debate: whether a “good guy with a gun” can actually put a stop to gun violence. It’s a theory long promoted by the National Rifle Association and some Republican lawmakers in place of stricter gun control measures. “We know from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said in May 2022.
But that theory didn’t prove true in Uvalde, Texas, where it took 77 minutes for officers to kill the gunman who fatally shot 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School last year despite the presence of 376 officers from various law enforcement jurisdictions. Some of them reportedly delayed going inside the school because they feared the gunman’s AR-15-style rifle. An armed school resource officer was stationed at the school but was not…
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