On Wednesday, February 14th Nikolas Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and fired his semiautomatic AR-45 assault rifle into classrooms and killed at least 17 people.

Since January 1st, 2018 there have been 18 school shootings.

Since the Florida school shooting, there were rallies calling for change and stricter gun laws. Everyone sent their "thoughts and prayers."

However, "thoughts and prayers" are not enough.

Ever since the Sandy Hook school shooting, there were people pushing for stricter gun laws. However, nothing has changed, and more mass shootings took place. According to Vox, Americans usually would discuss stricter gun laws for "less than a week or two" then move on. People likeNelba Márquez-Greene, who lost her daughter in the Sandy Hook shooting, and Erica Lafferty, whose mother was the principal at Sandy Hook when she died, also in the shooting, are blaming Congress for the mass shootings that are continuing to take place. No new gun laws had been passed and it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

In Florida, the government lost the vote to consider a weapons ban. SherylAcquaroli, a 16-year-old junior from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said to CNN, the next person who is killed by an AR-15 like the one used at her school will be the fault of the 71 people who voted.

The government has ample opportunities to implement stricter gun laws, but they continue to do nothing, and innocent people continue to die in mass shootings. There are people like, Tomi Lahren, a conservative political commentator, who says it's about weak gun laws but about "another lunatic." The President of the United States, Donald Trump, responded to the Florida shooting but did not even say anything about gun laws or gun control, he only said the word "gunfire" when he described what happened. He talked about working with state and local officials to make schools safer and dealing with the issue of mental health.

There is no reason why a civilian should have access to semiautomatic weapons or bump stocks to make their automatic weapons semiautomatic. States needs to be more thorough when considering letting someone buy a gun. Someone needs to be held accountable for the lives that were lost.

More needs to be done thansending "thoughts and prayers."