‘My heart broke’: Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown on the Parkland shooting

Karamo Brown of Queer Eye has spoken out emotionally about last month’s shooting at his former high school.

Brown graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 1999, along with Aaron Feis, who went on to work at the school and was killed in the shooting.

Addressing the Human Rights Campaign’s Spring Equality Convention this week, Brown spoke about how seeing the tragedy at his former school affected him.

“When I saw on the news a few weeks back that my alma mater was being called the site of the world’s deadliest school massacre, you all cannot imagine how much my heart broke,” he said.

“To see that school, my high school, on television, and students be running out of the same hallways that I used to walk around gleefully broke my heart.”

Brown is also a parent to two sons, and spoke about how violence in the news affects him as a parent.

“Anytime someone gets shot, whether it’s an unarmed African American male, or whether it’s a school shooting, my sons immediately come to my mind,” he said.

“I look at these kids and I see my own kids, and I can’t help but think about the parents who are grieving for their children that are lost, because no parent should ever outlive their child. It just shouldn’t happen.

“So the fact that this happened at my high school, and the students said, ‘Enough is enough, and we’re going to step up and make sure that this never happens again’… it just makes me so proud.”

Brown has joined the growing number of people calling for better gun control in the US after the massacre at Parkland.

“You know, not only as an alum, but also as a parent now, thinking about those precious lives that were lost, it means it’s time for change” he said.

“Enough is enough.”

He praised the students who are leading action to call for gun control, and encouraged others to take a stance against gun violence.

“Never again will we stand by and watch our kids die, I can promise you that as a father and an alum of Douglas,” Brown said.

“Never again—it is up to us today to march and say never again.”