By Katanga Johnson and Zach Fagenson

PARKLAND/TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Dozens of students and parents at the Florida high school where 17 teenagers and staff were killed in a shooting last week came to the state capital of Tallahassee on Tuesday to lobby for a ban on assault rifles.

Last week's massacre, the second-deadliest public school shooting in U.S. history, has sparked a national debate about gun rights and prompted young people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and across the United Kingdom to demand stricter gun controls.

The South Florida high school students were in tears as they got off the bus in Tallahassee and were greeted by their classmates with waves, cheers and earnest applause.

“We're here to make sure this never happens again,” Stoneman graduating class member Diego Pfeiffer said over a crackling microphone to the crowd, which included hundreds of students from a Tallahassee high school.

On Tuesday, less than a week after the shooting, Florida's Republican-dominated House of Representatives rejected an attempt to introduce a bill to ban the sale of assault rifles in the state.

“I will not return to school until the legislators and the president change this law,” said Tyra Hemans, a 19-year-old high school graduate who traveled to the state capital.

“Three people I turned to for advice and courage are gone, but never forgotten. It is for them that I am going to our state capital to tell lawmakers that we are fed up with stupid gun laws,” Hemans said.

Activists from the school and parent group at the high school in Parkland, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale, were scheduled to hold a rally on Wednesday in front of the state Capitol building, which is about 725 kilometers north of the school.

In the attack on February 14, 14 students and three teachers were killed and 15 other people were injured.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former student who was expelled from Stoneman Douglas High School for disciplinary problems, was arrested and charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder. Authorities say he was armed with an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault rifle that he legally purchased from a licensed gun dealer last year when he was 18.

Former classmates described Cruz as an outsider and troublemaker with a fascination with guns. Police acknowledged responding to numerous calls related to Cruz in recent years.

A member of the accused shooter's legal team from the Broward County Public Defender's Office said Tuesday that Cruz's life began to spiral out of control last year when he was expelled from school and his mother died.

The previous year, the Florida Department of Children and Families opened an investigation into Cruz after reports of self-harm, but the case was closed in November of that year with a determination that he was receiving adequate support, the agency said.

“By 2017, many of the support systems he had were no longer there. Yet his cries for help were still there, and the system, as designed, overlooked them and failed,” said Gordon Weekes, assistant public defender.

STAR POWER

The youth-led protest movement that erupted within hours of the shooting gained prominent support on Tuesday when movie star George Clooney and his wife Amal, a human rights lawyer, said they would donate $500,000 to fund a planned March 24 march for gun control in Washington.

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and media mogul Oprah Winfrey later joined in, each donating $500,000 to the march.

According to a Washington Postal News poll released Tuesday, 77 percent of Americans believe the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress is doing too little to prevent mass shootings. Sixty-two percent say President Donald Trump, also a Republican, has not done enough on that front.

Trump said Tuesday he had signed a memorandum directing the attorney general to draft regulations banning devices that turn firearms into machine guns, such as the “bump stock” used in the October mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Students and parents in other states in Florida and in other states, including Tennessee and Minnesota, held sympathy protests on Tuesday, according to local media reports. Miami television station WTVJ-TV showed video of about 1,000 teens and adults marching from a high school in Boca Raton to the scene of the shooting in Parkland, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the west.

An aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison was fired Tuesday after falsely accusing two students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School of being actors, the New York Times reported.

Florida's legislature has taken up at least two bills to expand gun access in its current session. But the next speaker of the legislature, Senator Bill Galvan, hinted at a possible turnaround: He called for a bill to raise the legal age for purchasing assault rifles from 18 to 21, the same as for handguns. The current session of the legislature ends on March 9, leaving little time for a vote.

In recent years, gun violence has become so commonplace in public schools and universities across the United States that education officials regularly conduct drills to teach students and staff what to do in the event of a mass shooting on school campus.

Gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and remains one of the most contentious issues in the country. A federal ban on assault weapons, in effect for ten years, expired in 2004.

Funerals continued for the young victims of Wednesday's attack. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point said Tuesday it had posthumously awarded a rare acceptance letter to Peter Wang, a student at the school killed in the shooting. Wang, a cadet in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, had hoped to attend the elite academy.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Andrew Hay in New Mexico and Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Writing by Scott Malone and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, James Dalgleish and Simon Cameron-Moore)