The 20-year-old accused of committing a shooting on the Florida State University campus back in April is slated to stand trial this fall, but a local gun control activist isn't waiting until November to use the court of public opinion to push for more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms in response to the attack.
Andres Perez is the head of the Florida State chapter of Students Demand Action, part of Everytown for Gun Safety's ever-expanding portfolio of anti-gun groups. In the pages of the Tallahassee Democrat, Perez used the shooting to argue in favor of keeping young adults disarmed, while making it harder for every lawful gun owner to protect themselves in their homes.
As a student at Florida State University who lived through the tragic shooting on our campus earlier this year, I know that allowing more guns on college campuses won’t make people safer. We must focus on making sure guns don’t fall into the wrong hands to begin with.
Research shows roughly three in four school shooters accessed their firearm from the home of a parent or close relative. In addition, out of the millions of responsible gun owners across the country, more than half do not secure their firearms properly. That’s unacceptable. Our student body was forced to run, hide, and barricade themselves as shots rang out, because someone had easy access to a gun that wasn’t theirs. The result of that negligence was one of the darkest days our campus has ever faced, and for some students, it wasn’t the first time: students who had also survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 were retraumatized by another act of senseless violence.
Perez pays scant attention to the fact that Florida does have a gun storage law, albeit one that is aimed at restricting minors from accessing a gun. Instead, he calls for lawmakers to adopt his version of "secure firearm storage", which he defines as "locking up all guns when they’re not being used and storing them separately from ammunition."
Of course, doing that adds additional steps for gun owners to be able to defend themselves in their home. If someone's breaking into your house in the middle of the night, they're not going to stop what they're doing while you run to another room to load your shotgun or put a magazine in your pistol.
Besides, while authorities have said that the suspect used a gun that belonged to his stepmother, I don't know that officials have offered any details about how the gun was stored. And of course, if his parents had no inkling of his plans, they may very well have believed that he should have had access to the guns in their home in case he ever needed one during a break-in.
Criminals still get ahold of guns, even in states with the most restrictive storage laws imaginable. But Perez is adamant that under no circumstances should students or staff members have been allowed to protect themselves with a gun of their own on campus.
The false premise behind allowing guns to be carried on campus is that armed individuals are the best or only way to stop an active shooter. But this argument relies on perfect conditions and ignores the risk of human error and more importantly disregards other proven prevention tools.
While FSU police responded quickly during our tragedy, campus carry would have made their job significantly more difficult in identifying and apprehending the shooter. How are police supposed to differentiate between the “good guy with a gun” versus the “bad guy with a gun” during an active shooting? Even trained law enforcement can falter in an active shooting situation.Giving more guns to young adults won’t make campuses safer either. Data shows people aged 18–20 commit gun homicides at over three times the rate of those 21 and older. Allowing young people to purchase, access, or carry around guns only puts themselves and everyone else in more danger.
If Florida had a campus carry law, it's entirely possible that by the time law enforcement arrived on the scene the shooting would have already been ended by an armed citizen. As to how police are supposed to differentiate between a legitimately armed citizen and a bad guy with a wearpon, they seem to be able to do that in most circumstances. Of course, there are also incidents where officers open fire on lawful gun owners and even unarmed civilians. That's an argument for better police training, not to restrict our right to self-defense.
Perez's argument that young adults are just too unsafe to exercise their Second Amendment rights is also misguided. While young adults may commit more gun homicides than older adults, the vast majority of adults will never commit murder or another violent crime regardless of their age. Arguing that a certain demographic should lose access to their right to keep and bear arms because statistically they're more likely than other groups to commit a violent offense is no different than the morally repugnant 19th century laws disarming freed slaves, Native Americans, and religious minorities under the theory that individual members of these groups posed an innate danger to themselves and others.
Perez may very well believe that the presence of armed citizens on campus would have made things worse, and he's entitled to his opinion. Personally, though, I don't think anyone should have to depend on the efficacy of "gun-free zones" or a quick response from law enforcement to protect them from harm when they're in sight of a deranged individual intent on mass murder. I'd rather run the risk of being mistaken for a bad guy by responding officers than being identified by the local coroner after police have engaged the attacker. If Perez doesn't want to own a gun, that's his choice. He and his fellow gun control supporters, however, want to deprive us of our choice to protect ourselves.
So far the Florida legislature has gone along with those demands, but if we can replace some of the squishes in the Florida Senate with candidates that truly understand and respect our Second Amendment rights, then maybe the next twisted individual who shows up on campus with murder on their minds will be greeted by an armed citizen instead of having a target-rich environment of defenseless victims to prey upon.
