Parents of MSD massacre victims urge people to head to polls for midterms

PARKLAND, Fla. – Parents and students who lost children, friends and classmates in the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre are urging people to head to the polls Tuesday for the midterm elections.

It's been nine months since Fred Guttenberg lost his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, in the mass shooting, but he said time doesn't make her death any easier.

"Everything I do, I only do because my daughter got killed," he said. "Today, I vote for my daughter and all the victims of gun violence. But there's nothing happy about this."

Guttenberg and other Parkland parents are casting their ballots in the midterm elections, hoping the people they help put into office work to prevent similar tragedies.

"Anyone who stands up for gun safety, I'm voting for them," Guttenberg said. 

Election Day is the culmination of months of organizing by March For Our Lives movement.

In a Washington Post editorial, activists and former MSD students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez wrote: "How many more shootings must there be before our leaders listen to us? We have a simple answer: Young people must vote -- all 62 million of us."

But the issue of gun control remains as controversial as ever.

"I believe more schools need to beef up their own security rather than trying to disarm hundreds of millions of people," Parkland voter Marty Williams said. 

"I want to ban bump stocks. I want a three-day waiting period. None of it is an alienation to anybody's Second Amendment right," Guttenberg said. "The legislation that got passed in this state after Feb. 14 --  had this state done that after Pulse, my daughter would be alive today."

Not all parents and students affected by the MSD tragedy are voting for the same candidates this Election Day, but their main goal is the same: To prevent another mass shooting from every occurring in this state and country.