TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Student survivors of last week’s deadly shooting at Florida State University urged state legislators Tuesday to block an effort to reverse a law passed after the 2018 Parkland school shooting that lowered the state’s gun-buying age from 21 to 18.
Days after a gunman terrorized the university in the state capital of Tallahassee, students traveled to the Capitol to call on lawmakers to take action to protect them from gun violence.
“When I transferred to Florida State University just last fall, I never thought I’d find myself locked inside a classroom, texting loved ones, unsure if I’d ever see them again,” said Andres Perez, a 20-year-old junior and president of the school’s chapter of Students Demand Action.
“We owe it to the victims, not just here at Florida State University, but across Florida and across our nation, to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Perez said.
Thursday’s shooting killed two men who were not students and injured six others on FSU’s campus, about one mile (1.6 kilometers) from the Capitol building, where lawmakers are in the final weeks of their annual session.
Investigators have said the student suspect in the FSU shooting, 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, used the former service weapon of his stepmother, a sheriff’s deputy, to carry out the shooting. Ikner was shot and wounded by police, but is expected to survive.
The student remains hospitalized and won’t be formally charged until he is released, Tallahassee Police Department spokesman Lt. Damon Miller Jr. said Tuesday. “We don’t have a timeline on that,” Miller said in a phone interview.
On Tuesday, FSU students stood alongside Democratic members of the state House of Representatives in the Capitol rotunda and recounted sending what they feared would be their final messages to family members, whispering “I love you” into their phones as they huddled in darkened classrooms.
“We built barricades that day with nothing but chairs,” said Natanel Mizrahi, a 22-year-old senior. “There were no locks on our doors. So instead, brave students stood near the entrance with more chairs to try and do anything that they could to stop a would-be attacker.”
The students called on lawmakers to reject the push to allow adults under age 21 to buy firearms, to ensure college classrooms have door locks, and to allocate funding for campus mental health resources and active shooter training.
In a statement, FSU spokesperson Amy Farnum-Patronis said active shooter training is optional and open to all students and employees, but is not currently mandatory for employees.
“Ensuring the safety and well-being of our campus community remains our foremost priority. Florida State University is continually reviewing and assessing our security protocols, including evaluating door locks, to ensure the safety of everyone on campus,” Farnum-Patronis said.
For some FSU students, it wasn’t the first time they have been traumatized by a school shooting. For a small group, the sight of abandoned laptops and bookbags left behind by students fleeing for their lives was a grim reminder of the shooting they survived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 people were killed and 17 others were injured.
After that shooting, student survivors and grieving families crowded Florida’s capitol in an extraordinary lobbying effort, successfully pushing the Republican-run Legislature to pass new gun control measures.
This session, lawmakers have been considering bills to expand gun rights and roll back some restrictions, including lowering the gun-buying age. Gov. Ron DeSantis and some Republican lawmakers have backed the measure, saying that if a person is old enough to be in the military, they should be able to purchase a gun.
Though the bill has the support of House Speaker Daniel Perez, Senate President Ben Albritton had been more hesitant about the measure even before the shooting at FSU.
Speaking with reporters in March, Albritton became emotional recounting his visit to the Parkland high school building. He said he is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association but that he has not made a decision on the measure.
___ Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in Tampa and Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach contributed to this report. 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.