Mass shootings have several common threads that could have been used to help prevent the violent acts, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Rubio addressed Wednesday's tragic school shooting in Florida that resulted in 17 deaths, many of them children.
"They all have this premeditation in common. We sit here in hindsight and see all these little points and say, take them together, these are warning signs. The problem is, they are not taken together," Rubio said. "The people who might have known about [the alleged shooter in Wednesday's incident] being expelled may not have known about the social media posts.
"The people who knew about the social media posts may not have known about what he wrote on YouTube, and the people that knew about YouTube might not have known that the police have been called several times for different reasons and so forth. Hence, the challenge for why it is so hard to find something that works."
A 19-year-old was slapped with 17 murder charges Thursday morning, the day after police said he walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and shot more than two dozen people.
Several reports have pointed to warning signs that existed, including social media posts that showed images of violence and several guns and knives.
Mass shootings, Rubio said, "are building upon one another. We must recognize the scary reality … it is a high probability, some equally troubled and deranged and silent individual is reading and watching coverage of this attack and gaining not sorrow, but inspiration."
Rubio noted that most mass shootings involve pre-meditation, planning, and warning signs. He called on Americans not to overlook the latter that often occur.
"We need to somehow figure it out. There is no greater obligation of our government to keep people safe from threats, both foreign and domestic. This is a threat," Rubio said.
"I'm not saying don't focus on the gun part, but I'm saying also focus on the violence part. … I know that we can no longer just chalk it up to isolated incidents."
President Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday morning and said the entire United States is grieving with Florida.
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