Free Republic

As Cortney noted, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has been suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis. This was expected. Israel had told staff prior to this announcement that this would most likely happen.  And Gov. DeSantis made it official. Israel, who has been criticized for how his department responded to the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school last February, also took part in the CNN town hall event, where he slammed the National Rifle Association. The event was held days after the shooting. Now, with his suspension, Israel has blamed the NRA, and said this was all about politics.  "There was...

Nearly four years before school shooter Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and educators at a Parkland high school, he confided in a therapist that he saw himself in a dream drenched in human blood. A May 3, 2014, notation in a Broward County schools psychiatric file said Cruz “reported [a dream] last week of him killing people and covered in blood. He smiled and told the therapist that sometimes he says things for shock value.” After Cruz’s disclosure to his therapist at the alternative Cross Creek School, administrators developed a “safety plan” to ensure the welfare of Cruz and...

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office has released the booking report on the arrest of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz.

We live in a country where liberals are constantly working to get rid of things that were once sacred to America. They've taken God out of our public schools. They've politicized and disrespected our national anthem. Now, exploiting a tragic school shooting in Florida, they're aiming to get rid of our guns. Liberals think turning America into a gun-free zone will make our schools safe and stop sick young men from going on bloody killing sprees like the one in Parkland. The clamor for stricter gun control by the mainstream media and leading Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer is as...

Just months before Nikolas Cruz killed 17 at his former high school in South Florida, the host family who had taken him in immediately after his mother's death warned local law enforcement that the 19-year-old had "used a gun against people before" and "has put the gun to others' heads in the past," according to records obtained by CNN. It's the latest indication of how law enforcement encountered warning signs about Cruz's violent behavior before he attacked students and teachers..... In November, Cruz's mother died after being diagnosed with pneumonia. Lynda Cruz was a widow raising her two adopted teenage...

I've always felt a little uncomfortable about candlelight vigils in response to man-made tragedies. Certainly, if people are killed by a deranged criminal, friends of the victims want to meet and have a memorial to remember their friends. But when someone guns down 17 people in a school, and a large number of people gather, apparently entirely unarmed, to mourn with candles, there seems something a little odd about that. I mean, if people are protesting the fact that a bunch of unarmed kids were slaughtered by a guy with a gun, by gathering, also without arms, aren't they just...

Wednesday’s mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., is the latest tragedy to befall a nation accustomed to headlines of gun deaths and the partisan political response that follows them. The gradual decrescendo that accompanies such horrific incidents — from outrage and thoughts and prayers to cooling off periods and eventual inaction — has long been familiar to Americans. Yet the killings in Parkland have come close on the heels of other acts of semi-automatic slaughter. Three of the nation’s 10 most deadly mass shootings have happened in the last six months, taking the lives of more than 100 people.

Former President Barack Obama issued a call for gun control just minutes after President Donald Trump addressed the nation in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Florida. Obama described more gun control laws as “long overdue,” despite his repeated failure to change gun laws during his presidency. “[U]ntil we can honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep them safe from harm, including long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws that most Americans want, then we have to change,” Obama wrote in a statement on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

Last night, Jonathon Fishman of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department revealed that mass murderer Nikolas Cruz used a Smith & Wesson AR15 semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.American Outdoor Brands, the holding company that owns the Smith & Wesson brand, has not commented on the revelation. Nor should we expect a comment to be forthcoming. What we can expect is the ongoing demonization of America’s most popular rifle platform as a “high powered” firearm, a “weapon of war” whose sole purpose is taking as much innocent life as quickly as possible. Like this: In...

Before Nikolas Cruz carried out his mass killing at a Florida high school this week, police responded to his home 39 times over a seven-year period, according to disturbing new documents. Details about the calls to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office — obtained from police records by CNN — were not immediately available and it was impossible to determine if all involved Cruz. But the nature of the emergencies at his Parkland home included “mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance” and “missing person,” KTLA reported. And a schoolmate, Brody Speno, told the network that cops were called to Cruz’s...

"Enough is enough!" "This can't go on!" "This has to stop!" These were among the comments that came through the blizzard of commentary after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. We have heard these words before. Unfortunately, such atrocities are not going to stop. For the ingredients that produce such slaughters are present and abundant in American society. And what can stop a man full of hate, who has ceased to care about his life and is willing to end it, from getting a weapon in a country of 300 million guns and killing as...

Nikolas Cruz confessed on Wednesday to being the shooter who killed 17 people at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, according to a Thursday report from the Broward County Sheriff's Office. Per the report, Cruz confessed to officers that he "began shooting students that he saw in the hallways and on the school grounds," according to AP. The report notes that Cruz told officers he'd "brought additional loaded magazines to the school campus and kept them hidden in a backpack until he got on campus to begin his assault." Once students started to run away from the school, Cruz ditched...

Local law enforcement sources have not found a connection between accused Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz and a Tallahassee-based paramilitary group.

PARKLAND, Fla. 4:30 p.m. A law enforcement official says he knows of “no known ties” between the suspect who confessed to a deadly mass shooting at a Florida high school and a white supremacist group. Lt. Grady Jordan is a spokesman for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office in Tallahassee, where the white nationalist militia known as the Republic of Florida is based. Jordan said Thursday that his office has arrested militia leader Jordan Jereb at least four times since January 2014 and has been monitoring the group’s membership. He says his office has “very solid” information on the group and...

During the latest news show, the Fox station in Miami reported that Cruz was a member of a white supremacist group. No name was given, but the reporters said a "White supremacist leader" verified that Cruz was part of his group.

I am a trauma surgeon, and I've seen what AR-15s can do. There's no reason for civilians to own them. An assault rifle is designed to deliver fatal wounds to multiple individuals within a short time period; it has no other purpose. The AR-15, the civilian version of the military assault rifle (M16 or M4), has become the most commonly used rifle in US mass shootings; the recent shootings in Parkland and Las Vegas, for instance, testify to the effectiveness of this weapon’s design. It was made for the military, to allow members of the armed forces to better dispatch...

The FBI came to visit me today about Nikolas Cruz BenTheBondsman Nikolas Cruz made a comment in one of my videos a few months ago about wanting to be a school shooter. Today’s unfortunate events at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida may have been what he was planning. Here’s the story.

At least 17 people are dead after a 19-year-old man opened fire at a high school campus in Parkland, Florida, police have said. The suspect has been named as Nikolas Cruz, 19, and is a former student at the school who had been expelled.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes accused President Donald Trump of exploiting the Florida high school shooting to shield his administration from answering questions at Wednesday’s White House press briefing. “Is the WH really hiding behind a school shooting so they don’t have to answer questions about a host scandals in the administration?” Hayes tweeted. “Kinda looks like that’s what’s happening.” Is the WH really hiding behind a school shooting so they don’t have to answer questions about a host scandals in the administration? Kinda looks like that’s what’s happening. — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 14, 2018

Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in Wednesday’s horrific massacre at a Florida high school, was allegedly reported to the FBI in September after he left a comment on a bail bondsman’s YouTube channel saying that he was going to be a “professional school shooter.” The former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had previously been expelled for disciplinary problems prior to the mass shooting that left 17 people dead.In a YouTube video published on the evening of the attack, Ben Bennight, a Mississippi bondsman, explained that he was contacted by the FBI at approximately 3 p.m. about a comment on...