Parkland Survivors Sound off About Waffle House Incident: ‘Shootings Don’t Just Happen in Schools’

Some of the student activists from Parkland, Florida addressed Sunday morning’s shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee Waffle House on Twitter.

Six people were shot and four were killed when suspect Travis Reinking allegedly opened fire in the restaurant. Another patron was able to wrestle the gun from him, and Reinking reportedly fled on foot, dropping the jacket he was wearing to reveal that he was nude underneath.

He is still at large according to the Nashville Police Department’s official Twitter account. The police also posted a photo of the gun Reinking used, which some twitter users have described as an AR-15 assault rifle, though no news outlets have identified it yet.

Many of the students who survived the Parkland, Florida school shooting on Feb. 14 commented on the shooting on Twitter on Sunday morning. The students have thrown themselves headlong into activism through voter registration initiatives and organizations like their March For Our Lives.

“He was white and he used an AR-15,” declared Emma Gonzalez. “The @NRA is about to say this man had mental health issues, so that the rest of us will get scared of anyone with poor mental health and buy a gun in preemptive defense so that gun sales increase. Shootings don’t just happen in schools, they happen everywhere in America, and now one has happened in Waffle House. You can donate all the shooting shelters to schools that you want, but at the end of the day, we can’t build our world out of Kevlar – someone is making Mad Money off that.”

“Removing the assault and semi-automatic weapons from our Civilian society, instituting thorough background checks and mandatory waiting periods (and raising the buying age and banning the production of high-capacity magazines) are the ways to stop shootings in America,” she concluded.

Another student, Jaclyn Corin, posted an infograph showing the various weapons used in some of America’s most notorious mass shootings.

“Add a Waffle House in Nashville to the list,” she wrote. “AR-15s attack with the same firepower used by highly-trained INFANTRY TROOPS and therefore do not belong in the hands of normal civilians.”

Many of the other student protesters, who gained a national platform after the tragedy at their schools, spoke up about Sunday morning’s events. They urged the American people not to accept mass shootings as a normal part of life.

“I’m sorry to all of the people affected by this tragic event,” wrote David Hogg. “Know that we are here and fighting for you.”

Some of the students also noted that they were still dissatisfied with the actions taken by lawmakers since February. In Florida, lawmakers passed a bill allowing teachers to be armed. Some schools have implemented measures such as see-through backpacks, metal detectors and kevlar shooting shelters, but Cameron Kasky wrote that “adding security measures to our schools is only a baby step in curing the epidemic of gun violence in our country.”

“You can’t learn, eat, shop, travel, go to work or even watch a movie without living In fear,” wrote Adam Alhanti. “My thoughts are with Tennessee right now.”