A man with a loaded gun stalks a student union building. In a flash, the peace of a university campus is shattered.
Students at Florida State University ran for their lives Thursday as a gunman opened fire, indiscriminately killing a 45-year-old father of two and a dining hall worker. The assailant wounded six others.
As another senseless shooting tragedy tore apart a close-knit campus, a wearily familiar cycle repeated itself: The campus was locked down, grief counselors arrived and classes and sporting events were cancelled. Frantic parents from faraway places helplessly worried if their kids were still alive.
Then came the inevitable, irreconcilable pleas for fewer guns and, yes, for more guns.
Trump’s misguided ‘obligation’
President Donald Trump called the shooting “a shame” but said America does not need stricter gun laws and that he has “an obligation to protect the Second Amendment.”
What about the obligation to protect American lives?
For the thousandth time, we were reminded that we should not have to live like this.
Yet the violence never ends. Two more people are dead. Many lives are ruined. A great state university is traumatized by fear.
Within hours of the shooting, state Sen. Ileana Garcia of Miami was being vilified on social media because, two weeks earlier, she had voted against a bill to allow guns on college campuses. Garcia, a Republican, said she does not believe that more guns will make students safer.
A part of Sen. Ileana Garcia’s X post, defending her vote against a “campus carry” gun bill.
In the wrong hands
It is much too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but this case has the same haunting characteristic of so many others.
A deadly weapon got into the wrong hands, of an apparently unstable person with irrational impulses, resulting in devastating consequences.
A shooting at Florida State resonates especially strongly across South Florida. Year after year, FSU is a favored destination for thousands of graduating seniors from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Many of those currently enrolled were young teenagers when the massacre occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The monthly active shooter drills are a part of their life experiences.
“It’s something I lived … school shooting drills, constantly, every single month,” student Jayden D’Onofrio of Weston told CNN on Friday, as he helped friends escape campus for safer ground. “This is just another chapter of that.”
A troubled assailant
The accused assailant in the FSU shooting is a 20-year-old political science major who, many news accounts said, was in the middle of a traumatizing family custody struggle a decade ago.
To compound this horror, the gunman’s stepmother is a career sheriff’s deputy whose bosses called her “exeptional” and who has worked as a school resource officer to keep middle-school kids safe. Authorities say her former service revolver was the murder weapon.
Former classmates of accused killer Phoenix Ikner recalled his “concerning” past radical speech criticizing Rosa Parks, the Black Lives Matter movement and in support of Nazi symbols, CNN reported.
The FSU community is strong. Thousands of students and others gathered Friday on the campus green to grieve and to draw emotional strength from each other.
Another familiar cycle emerged with makeshift memorials, prayer vigils and heartfelt expressions across social media.
The next FSU commencement ceremony is two weeks away. What should be a joyous experience is overshadowed by this terrifying tragedy.
“We mourn together. We lean on one another. And we remember who we are,” FSU President Richard McCullough wrote in an online posting. “We are Florida State. We are family. And we stand together.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
Source: www.sun-sentinel.com – All rights belong to the original publisher.
Stay Updated: Stay Updated with CUOS Media – News, Articles, Stories & More!
