The shooting at Florida State University is likely to remain a hot topic for some time, if for no other reason than it was a very high-profile shooting in a state people think of as very pro-gun.
But while I tend to believe it's proof that gun control failed, it seems there's a bigger issue at work. It's proof the state needs campus carry.
See, while all kinds of gun restrictions failed to stop the alleged attacker from stealing a gun and using it to kill two people and injure five others, there's a little fact we need to understand.
The doors at FSU couldn't lock.
When a gunman opened fire outside of Florida State University's busiest building, nearby students desperately used chairs and desks to barricade themselves inside classrooms with a near-fatal flaw: the doors have no locks.
Two students hope to change that.
Seniors Meghan Bannister and Sarah Walker started an online petition demanding FSU install internal locks on all of its doors, mere hours after a 20-year-old shooter killed two and wounded multiple others outside of the Student Union—a building away from the women’s classroom.
As of Monday morning, they’ve gathered nearly 30,000 signatures.
In interviews with The Floridian, the women described the terror of hiding inside a second-floor classroom facing the Union. It was supposed to be their last class as FSU undergraduates in Professor Bob Garner’s Managing New Venture Growth lecture.
Garner, who started the lesson by introducing a guest speaker, would end it using his body to seal their classroom door shut.
Why? Because it only locked from the outside.
Now, I get that when the building was probably first built, there wasn't really a need to lock a classroom from the inside foreseen. I could even see arguing that locking it from the inside could be a fire hazard.
But we live in a very different world. We live in one where maniacs want to kill people in job lots.
Gun Owners of America's Luis Valdez has a solution to this sort of thing, though. Republicans in the state legislature even had a chance to address it, but failed.
📢This is why we need CAMPUS CARRY in Florida!
— Luis Valdes (@RealFLGunLobby) April 21, 2025
But FL's Republicans killed it TWICE this year.
First by driving Rep. Joel Rudman out of the State House and killing his bill (HB 31).
Second, by Sen. Ileana Garcia (R) voting against Sen. Randy Fine's Campus Carry bill (SB 814)! https://t.co/sEOhhDOaOo pic.twitter.com/armSdPIe4d
Now, let's understand that anyone who is carrying a gun would do well to try and avoid having to use it. Taking a human life is no simple, easy thing for most people. It leaves scars on the psyche that don't just go away.
But it's far better to have scars on the psyche from your action than from the state preventing you from acting, in my opinion.
Especially when those scars might well come with scars upon the body...if you're lucky.
Florida does not have campus carry, but it also doesn't have doors that will lock from the inside in the case of an attempted mass murder. How did that get missed?
My own take is that if the state is going to prohibit people from being able to defend themselves under force of law, then they take on the obligation to at least take some proactive steps to protect them. They need to take some rudimentary steps to defend those who are under their care.
Doors that lock on the inside are the bare minimum, and FSU couldn't even do that.
If we cannot trust the institutions to take such basic steps, then the onus is on the legislature to empower people to protect themselves on college campuses.
