Another Gun Control Failure  by Bohdan Rabarsky

   Last Thursdaya, at Florida State University, shots rang out from a lone gunman and before the gunman was neutralized by police 2 innocent people were killed and 6 injured. Didn’t the gunman realize it was a Gun Free Zone?  Possibly, there weren’t enough signs posted about the campus?  Or was it he just decided not to follow the rules, as criminals always do?

   Was this some lone wolf out to wreak havoc with a weapon of war – what gun control advocates also call assault rifles – and what we call modern sporting rifles?  No.  This 20 year old University student used his mother’s handgun in this carnage.

  Florida is a pro-gun state, but still has a few restrictive and ineffective gun control measures. For instance, after the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, the Florida legislature enacted a law that to purchase a long gun you must be 21. It was also a Federal Law that you must be 21 to purchase a handgun.

The FSU shooter was a 20 year old!  So, those laws did not stop him.

   After the Parkland High School shooting, Florida also passed a Red Flag Law which allows police to disarm dangerous people before they can hurt themselves or anyone else. There were some indications that the 20 year old student was troubled.

The Red Flag law didn’t prevent this shooting.

  Mandatory storage laws, which are in effect in Florida, apply to keeping guns locked up when there are minors in the home. The shooter in this situation was a 20 year old student, so the mandatory storage law wouldn’t apply in this situation. 

   Florida State University is a gun-free zone and, in fact, most mass school shootings happen in gun-free zones. Shooters prefer targets that can’t fight back, as their usual goal is to kill as many people as possible. They target people that have no means of returning fire. All the gun laws the Florida State Legislature could have enacted would not have made a difference.  The main objective of this student seems to have been to kill as many people as possible.

   All this shows us is that gun control doesn't work, it has never worked and no matter how many new laws we keep enacting, it won't save lives.  It's not the gun but the person holding the gun. If we removed all firearms, then those wanting to do harm would use knives, vehicles or bombs; all of which have been used in the past.

   We'll always have people that want to harm others, so citizens need to have the ability to protect themselves. Usually by the time law enforcement arrives, the damage has been done, so citizens need the ability to protect themselves.  As the saying goes, when police are minutes away, help is only 1,500 feet per second away. 

Women for Gun Rights issued the following statement which sums it up well: “The brutal attack at Florida State University is yet another tragic reminder that Gun Free Zones don’t stop killers—they stop law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves,” said Dianna Muller, Founder of Women for Gun Rights. “It’s time to stop disarming the innocent and start training and equipping students, faculty, and staff to protect innocent lives.”