'I almost shot my classmates': Man's shocking confession online
A man bullied as a child has revealed of the moment he nearly shot his classmates in the wake of the Florida school shooting which claimed the lives of 17 people.
Daniel Riley, who grew up in Washington State, took to Facebook on Friday to explain why he nearly pulled the trigger on bullies who targeted him when he was 14.
Mr Riley, who now lives in Arizona, said he didn't suffer from any mental illness. His almost took advantage of having access to guns in his family home purely due to a fit of rage.
"I was not mentally ill. I had no juvenile criminal record. I'd never been suspended from school. I was a straight-A student," he wrote online.
"I almost shot my classmates, because I experienced a moment of powerlessness and rage, like many teenagers do, and I had access to firearms."
He revealed that following his parent's divorce, he was already feeling fragile. But when the bullies enlisted the help of older high school friends to give him a "beatdown", Mr Riley flipped.
The group of youths had boarded the same bus as him and followed him to his home. When he got inside they began to surround the house and challenged him to a fight.
"So I went upstairs, and I got a shotgun. I checked to make sure it was loaded. Then I released the safety and chambered a shell," he revealed.
"I walked back downstairs and held the barrel against the front door as some of these kids stood on the porch, pounding and yelling at me to let them in.
"I began to squeeze the trigger, anticipating the blast would penetrate the door and knock these kids to the ground. Then I'd fling the door open and start shooting everyone as they ran away in terror."
But as he went to do so, one of the teens yelled a car was coming and they dispersed. Mr Riley had missed his moment.
"I wanted them to feel the same fear they'd inflicted on me. I wanted to hurt them like they'd hurt me. But most of all, I wanted them to feel powerless like I’d felt. I wanted to feel control over just one thing in my life."
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Two decades later, Mr Ross says he still thinks about the incident which so nearly turned fatal.
He says his post, which as been shared over 50,000 times, was uploaded in a bid to highlight the gun problem the US has, regardless of the mental state of the perpetrator.
In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School many have pointed out that the alleged gunman, Nikolas Cruz, suffered from a mental illness.
"I'm explaining what I did, so you will understand that the gun problem in America is not a mental health problem. I was not mentally ill. The problem is access to firearms," he wrote.
Mr Riley says he owns four guns and says a background check wasn't needed when he bought them prompting him to call for stricter gun laws.
