A teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., says in a new interview he was planning a lecture on school shootings and politicians’ responses on the day of the deadly shooting at the school earlier this month.
Jeff Foster, who teaches AP United States Government and Politics at the Florida high school, told Splinter News that on the day of the shooting, he was teaching his classes about special interest groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA) and NAACP, and their impact on government.
Foster said as part of the lesson he discussed with the students how both politicians and the NRA respond to mass shootings, and how “we lose attention” following shootings.
{mosads}“That’s not the NRA’s fault, that’s our fault,” Foster told Splinter. “We lose attention and that’s why interest groups run the country. If it’s not the NRA then it’s another group.”
Foster, who told Splinter he’s a registered Republican who voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, said he had taught the lesson four times by the time the alleged gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, began his attack that left 17 people dead and multiple others injured.
Two of the Parkland students who have emerged as fierce advocates for gun control since the shooting — Emma González and David Hogg — had heard Foster’s lesson on special interest groups before the attack, according to Splinter.
Students who survived the attack, including González and Hogg, have ramped up the pressure on lawmakers to pass gun control legislation in the weeks since the attack.
The two students, along with parents and other survivors of the shooting, confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) at a town hall event last week, calling on him to refuse future donations from the NRA.
The students have also taken to social media to slam Rubio and other lawmakers for accepting NRA donations and to call on travelers to boycott spending spring break in Florida until the state passes gun control legislation.