Parkland massacre victim’s dad praises Florida school safety laws as national model

Fox News Digital spoke with Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Petty shared how Florida is preventing mass shootings, and what other states can learn.

“We’ve had school safety bills now every year since the Parkland tragedy,” he said. “So we’re doing a lot of things right here in Florida, and we wanted to share that blueprint with the rest of the country. So we invited states from across the nation to come, and we’re all learning from each other. And hopefully, as a group, help each other solve this problem.”

Díaz said that in all the past mass shootings across the U.S., there was always a crisis point.

“We know in all of these shootings that there was leakage, but there’s also the ability, if you have things right, to prevent it, even after everything else has failed,” he said.

A memorial is made outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and faculty were killed in a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Feb. 19, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Utah has taken notes on how Florida has risen from the Parkland tragedy. Matt Pennington, the Utah State Security Chief with the Department of Public Safety, said that they have “paralleled” Florida’s legislation.

Pennington told Fox News Digital that Utah’s legislative body is taking proactive steps to prevent a tragedy before it happens.

“Several of the Parkland parents came to our legislative session and spoke to legislators about their experience, their impact and how it’s affected them in their lives,” he said. “And that really just drove it home when you have people coming that are victims and their children have lost their lives due to school violence.

“It’s really important that we get ahead of this in Utah and hopefully not have an attack.”