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BY DC CUEVA
■ @DC408Dxtr @ TW / IG / YT
Two weeks ago, the world watched with anguish and horror by something that's become all too familiar the past few years: a high-profile mass shooting in the United States. In the wake of the two tragic events in Orlando in summer 2016 where 49 people died, last fall's Route 91 tragedy where 58 concert-goers were killed in Las Vegas and so many other incidents like these, lobbyists have been calling for stricter gun control laws similar to those found in other countries.
The latest incident took place down on Valentine's Day in Parkland, FL outside Fort Lauderdale, where at Stoneman Douglas High School, 17 people were gunned down and 14 others were injured by the bullets fired by 19-year-old expelled student Nikolas Jacob Cruz. Right now, authorities and prosecutors haven't come to a conclusion of what caused Cruz to treat his old high school as his own shooting gallery, and as students have now returned from their grieving period the hashtag #NeverAgain has become a rallying cry for them to take action.
But while those two shows gave him a national platform, the truest passions of this Tampa resident are comedy and videomaking, and when he's not on the stand-up stage at night, by day you'd likely find JJ on the scene with a suit, a microphone and a camera in tow. If that sounds familiar, then he's doing what a lot of us do in being an independent reporter and newsman, building off of the early experience he had of doing "man on the street" interviews with would-be passers by. His YouTube channel features a number of those, including talking to media and delegates when the GOP held their convention in the Cigar City in 2012, the city's biggest annual event - the Gasparilla festival each February, and even out west along Hollywood Boulevard.
While our attention last Sunday was divided among the Closing Ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the winter return of The Walking Dead, the Celebrity Big Brother finale, a Bachelor Tell All special and a WWE PPV card, a gun show took place at the Tampa State Fairgrounds a mere eleven days after the Parkland shootings. JJ and his Tampa News Force had the opportunity to go around to talk to people about guns, gun control and everything related to them. This also includes mentions of the NRA, which has certainly found itself at the center of controversy in the past few days with sponsors pulling their support for the organization in droves in the aftermath of the Florida tragedy.
Those who work in the news business, whether with the mainstream media or independently as citizen journalists, always relish those moments of being on the scene when something newsworthy takes place right in front of them... yours truly had that moment when I shot a fight at a local Target store for SnapChat and posted it on Instagram within minutes. JJ had that moment happen to him when he saw a man getting chased down in the parking lot at that gun show after he stole a gun off a table. Below is of what those in the biz refer to as a "vox pop", then that gun robbery caught on tape.
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Tomorrow -- or later today out East, a doubleheader: we'll have the Pulse of this week's episode of The Challenge Vendettas, and our look at the premiere of Winter Break Hunter Mountain. We hope you'll join us then, and have a great Friday.
- I AM DC
