Jaclyn Corin was delivering Valentine’s Day carnations at the 1200 building of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, when a gunman, later identified as 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, opened fire at the South Florida campus, killing 17 people and injuring 18 others.
It was that day, Corin, an 11th-grade student who said that had the shooting occurred just moments earlier, she would’ve met Cruz face-to-face, was abruptly thrown into a lifelong community: survivors of mass shootings.
Mere days after the traumatic incident, the Florida native organized 100 of her fellow students to make a nearly 7-hour drive to the state’s capital, Tallahassee, to meet with legislators. Their efforts not only led to the creation of one of the biggest gun control advocacy organizations, March For Our Lives, but also to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which raised the minimum age to purchase a firearm in the Sunshine State from 18 to 21.
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Parkland survivors’ activism came on the heels of another community hearing from massive trauma. Just two years earlier, another shooter, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub, during a “Latin Night” party, killing 49 individuals and injuring 58 more. The incident was considered the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack in New York City…