Lessons Learned from the Parkland and Pulse Mass Shootings

There have been 83 school shootings in 2024 with the latest being the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin where a 15-year-old girl killed a teacher and a student, and also injured six others. Since the pandemic when schools were largely shut down, there has been a stark increase in mass shootings nationwide, with over 500 mass shootings across the country, as of December 25 according to Gun Violence Archive.

Host Jeff Pegues speaks with Orange County Sheriff John Mina, who was the Orlando Police Chief when the Pulse shooting happened in 2016, where 49 people were murdered and more than 50 others injured. “[The Pulse Nightclub attack] did start as an active shooter type of situation, but then quickly morphed into a barricade, but also there was a terrorism nexus as well as the threat of explosives…The shooter was threatening to blow up half a city block and everyone inside or around the nightclub at Pulse,” says Sheriff Mina.

Then, you will hear from Max Schachter, whose son Alex was murdered in the Parkland School shooting in 2018. Schacter says, “I know what these families are going through and having your child predecease you in a mass shooting, there is nothing worse than that.”

Both Mina and Schacter share lessons learned from these terrible tragedies and offer their perspectives on the best practices needed to minimize and mitigate mass shootings.

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