Personal experience gives you a perspective on an experience, it does not give you expertise on the general issue. The students at Parkland went through an experience but that experience does not give them expertise on gun control, crime, and mental illness. And as we see, personal experience can color a persons perspective, their emotional involvement can blind them to facts, and lead them down the wrong path.
I cannot be clear(er), sorry. I have significant limitations to the information I can reveal online. Let's just say that I have years of experience, neck deep in the horrors.
Don't be ridiculous ! If you were never in combat, as a Soldier, you can't know what it was like. Or what is was like on 9/11/01 at the World Trade Center Towers 1 & 2.... My expertise on gun control in various Countries. Please refrain from telling me what I know. I know about crime having been a Police Officer and Constable. In the U.S. and abroad.
Think about what I wrote and what you wrote - they agree with each other. Your expertise is through the years of being a police officer, you are an expert in your career field of study. You are not an expert on terrorism because you were in NYC on 911. The Parkland children are not experts on crime and gun control because they were in school when the killings took place. A person is not an expert on transportation because he was in a car accident. A soldier is not an expert on military strategy simply because he has been in combat. Those are all experiences, they do not bestow expertise on a broad subject.
I have not claimed otherwise. I was simply iresponding to Cranks claim of knowing the Veteran ( combat ) experience, and I responded, if you were not in combat, there is no way to know what loss of fellow soldiers is like, when they die in your care, you see their mangled bodies. I was exposed to death from a very early age.