Paul Ryan Meets With Parkland Shooting Survivors

PARKLAND, FL — Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) met with students of Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida following a horrific school shooting that left 17 of their classmates dead.

“These young people are smart and passionate, and I’m grateful to them for sharing their story. They have just experienced incredible tragedy, and we had an important discussion about how to keep our kids and our schools safe," Ryan said in a prepared statement. "We will continue to work to find common ground on solutions that can help prevent the kind of senseless violence these students endured. I thank them for making this journey and speaking with me.”

According to a CNN report the students at the meeting asked Ryan for a ban on assault-style weapons, high-capacity magazines while implementing universal background checks Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch, who was also at the meeting, said that Ryan indicated that these measures don't have broad support, in that all three ideas have significant opposition in both chambers in Congress.

Ryan stated at a news conference earlier Tuesday that he did not want to infringe on citizens' constitutional rights and due process rights while speaking about some of the protections he wants to see put in place.

"We shouldn't be banning guns for law-abiding citizens, we should be focusing on making sure that citizens who should not get guns in the first place don't get those guns, and that is why we see a big breakdown in the system here. In this particular case, there were a lot of breakdowns, from local law enforcement, to the FBI getting tips that they didn't follow up on, to, you know, school resource officers who are trained to protect kids in these schools, and who didn't do that, and that to me is probably the most stunning one of all."

Ryan stated during Tuesday's new conference that there were clear gaps in the U.S. background check system that needed to be filled and mental health reforms that were urgently needed. Ryan said that sweeping mental health reforms were passed earlier this year, "but those reforms still have a ways to go to be implemented."

Image Published With Permission, Via Speaker Paul Ryan's Campaign Office