FSU students who endured Parkland shooting urge Florida lawmakers to defend gun control law
FSU students who endured Parkland shooting urge Florida lawmakers to defend gun control law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida students who were traumatized by the 2018 Parkland school shooting — and last week’s deadly shooting at Florida State University — are urging the Republican-controlled statehouse not to roll back gun restrictions passed in the wake of the killing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Gun rights activists have been fighting to unravel the 2018 law since its passage, including a provision that raised the state’s minimum age to buy a gun to 21. Gov. Ron DeSantis and some Republican lawmakers have argued that if 18-year-old Floridian can serve in the military, they should be able to purchase a firearm.
Following the FSU shooting, student activists — including double mass-shooting survivors — are walking the halls of the Capitol building, lobbying lawmakers to support gun control policies in the final two weeks of the legislative session, which is set to end May 2.
“No one should ever have to experience a school shooting — let alone two — just to have to beg lawmakers to care enough to stop the next one,” said Stephanie Horowitz, who was a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 and is now a graduate student at FSU.
Two people were killed and six others injured in the shooting last Thursday that terrorized FSU’s campus, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the state Capitol.
Logan Rubenstein, a 21-year-old junior at FSU, said it could have been much worse if a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers had not taken action in 2018 after Parkland.
“It wasn’t as deadly as it could have been,” Rubenstein said. “And to me, that’s because of the laws that we passed after Parkland.”
Rubenstein was in eighth grade at nearby Coral Springs Middle School when a 19-year-old gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
In the aftermath of that massacre, Parkland survivors and relatives of the victims descended on the state capitol in an extraordinary feat of advocacy, successfully pushing a Republican-led legislature that previously shunned gun control measures to pass wide-ranging gun legislation just weeks afterward.
That included establishing a red flag law, which allows courts to take away guns from people who pose a danger to themselves or others, and raising the state’s gun-buying age.
Investigators say the suspect in the FSU shooting, a 20-year-old student at the university named Phoenix Ikner, armed himself with a handgun that was the former service weapon of his stepmother, a local sheriff’s deputy.
Under current Florida law, Ikner couldn’t legally buy a rifle from a federally licensed dealer.
Rubenstein said his message to lawmakers is to find the “political courage” to protect the state’s gun restrictions.
“When it comes to life and death, it’s important to do the right thing,” he said.
About three weeks before the FSU shooting, the Florida House passed a bill that would lower the state’s minimum age to buy a gun to 18. The proposal had already stalled in the state Senate before the shooting, and it appears even less likely to advance now.
On Wednesday, Republican state Sen. Corey Simon, a former FSU football player who represents Tallahassee, was moved to tears as he spoke on the Senate floor about the “senseless violence.”
“Today I rise and ask for a moment of silence for my Seminole family, as we mourn those lost and the many lives that have been changed forever,” Simon said, at times bowed over in grief.
Speaking Wednesday to student activists rallying on the steps of Florida’s historic old Capitol, Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky said she’s continuing to push for action. Polsky, whose district includes Parkland, is among the Democrats who have sponsored gun control bills this session that never got a hearing in the Capitol, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers.
“I am begging them to do something like we did after the horrific Parkland shooting,” Polsky said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen. But we will continue to fight.”
Before the students headed back into the halls of the Capitol to lobby lawmakers and their aides, Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani told them not to let the regular rhythm of Tallahassee’s legislative process slow them down.
“They have the power to waive the rules and agenda whatever bills they want,” Eskamani said of Republican leaders. “We’re not trying to make this political. We are trying to save lives.”
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
By KATE PAYNE
Associated Press/Report for America
