Florida's gun debate persists a year after Parkland mass shooting

PARKLAND, Florida: A year after Florida lawmakers rushed through far-reaching legislation on school safety and gun control in response to the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, the state is on the verge of reopening the heart-wrenching debate.Gun control advocates vow to block a recommendation to arm teachers, while conservatives aim to rescind the new gun restrictions. The opposing viewpoints are likely to create some tension when the Florida legislative session begins next month. Advertisement "A lot of those nerves are still raw, and there are still a lot of debates about all of these things," said Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who is working on a book about the shooting with a victim's father.Massive student protests across the country reshaped the U.S. debate on firearms after a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle in a five-and-a-half-minute shooting spree at the school on Feb 14, 2018.Twenty states passed some form of gun regulation last year, including nine states with a Republican governor, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.Florida, one of the most gun-friendly states in the country, quickly imposed a three-day waiting period for gun purchases and raised the age limit for buying rifles from 18 to 21. Advertisement Advertisement The law also required schools to place at least one armed staff member or law enforcement officer at each campus and retrofit classrooms with "hard corners," which give students a place to seek cover from gunfire.Since then, the sheriff of Broward County was dismissed, a special commission issued a 458-page report to examine what happened as well as make recommendations and schools across Florida have had nearly a year to implement the law's requirements.Even so, some schools have

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