Florida has come a long way in the last few years when it comes to gun rights, but there's still a long way to go. We keep fighting there because the fight is needed. In the aftermath of Parkland, lawmakers lost their nerve and went on an anti-gun rampage, and that needs to be undone.
But not everyone agrees that Florida should. In fact, some think the Sunshine State has gone too far in the pro-gun direction as it is.
And when that person is a teacher who worked at Marjorie Stoneman-Douglas High School on that fateful day, they're going to get a bit of attention when they say as much. And since it's also apparently Teacher Appreciation Week, it's an opportunity for that particular anti-gunner to make an appearance and try to present gun control as needed.
This Teacher Appreciation Week, Florida can take action and put an end to the public health crisis of gun violence by addressing our lax gun laws. Gun violence was the 2nd leading cause of death for children in Florida, resulting in 132 deaths in 2023 alone.
I am especially saddened when I think about the year since the shooting at Florida State University in April 2025, which took the lives of two, injured six and traumatized another entire community. In the year since, the FSU community has rallied for common sense gun legislation. Yet, our government has only expanded gun rights, including allowing concealed carry on college campuses.
Well, it should be noted that campuses were completely gun-free when FSU happened, thus there was no one to stop the killer when he started shooting people. Like it or not, would-be mass killers don't really care about the gun-free zones except if they can be used as a target-rich environment for their sick agenda.
In fact, the entire event was a clear signal that gun control wouldn't keep people safe.
We know that two-thirds of school shootings take place because a student has access to an unlocked gun in the home and 4.6 million kids around the country are living in homes with unsecured firearms. So why create even more access to deadly weapons that risk the safety of all students and teachers?
Because an unlocked gun ending up in the hands of a disturbed student is bad, but a gun in the hands of someone who just wants to protect themselves and possibly others is a different matter entirely. Guns have no volition of their own. They don't choose who to serve or what to do. They're simple mechanical objects that direct a hammer to hit the primer on a round when the trigger is pulled. As such, treating all guns as equal is as ridiculous as blaming the cars for drunk drivers.
Dangerous policies like arming teachers bring more weapons to campuses, further risking the safety of students and teachers. Studies show that arming teachers provides another instance where students can gain access to an unsecured firearm.
Except that while "studies" show this, they can't provide concrete examples of that actually happening. Why is that? There are states that have allowed armed school staff for quite a while. Utah, for example, has had that for ages now, and yet I can't find a single incident of a student accessing a teacher's firearm.
So how do these studies somehow figure this is a thing when there's no evidence of it being a thing? Could it be that the studies are all BS? I mean, even RAND admits that the science is lacking on almost all of these gun studies, and they like gun control.
Florida is one of the 26 states that requires gun owners to safely store their firearms. Yet, safe storage laws in the state only require loaded firearms to be stored securely, meaning unloaded firearms are free to be within reach of children who can then access ammunition.
Florida must strengthen regulations and further institute policies that make the regulations widely known and understood. Adopting non-partisan laws like “Safe Homes, Safe Schools Law” from Michigan, which requires yearly education for parents and guardians on safe gun storage, could go a long way in protecting our school communities from gun violence.
I'll say that if you're going to have mandatory storage laws--they're not "safe storage" laws, no matter how they try to frame them, just mandatory--then sure, a program that seeks to educate parents on the law annually through the schools is probably a sound idea. Most people don't keep up with what all the gun laws are, and thus may find themselves in violation without knowing it.
I disagree with these laws, though, because when seconds count, the last thing anyone needs to do is fumble with their gun safe. The whole thing with unloaded guns may well have been with the idea that someone could slam a magazine in the gun and rack the slide faster, thus not die because they couldn't get to their gun. Or it might not have been. I don't know, nor do I really care.
What I care about is that while I'm sure this author went through an awful lot that day, she clearly doesn't understand anything she's talking about. She likely got a lot of anti-gun talking points from her new friends in the gun control community, but not any education on guns or the facts that surround these policies.
All too typical, I'm afraid.
