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 raised the state’s gun-buying age from 18 to 21.
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.
As of Tuesday afternoon, five of the patients who suffered gunshot wounds have been discharged from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital while one is still hospitalized and is in “good condition,” according to TMH spokesperson Sarah Cannon. Hospital officials would not confirm the identity of the patient, citing patient privacy laws.
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.
