Tallahassee, FL — A 20-year-old man opened fire on the Florida State University campus Thursday, killing two people and injuring six more, according to officials.
Authorities revealed that the suspected gunman was an FSU student and the son of a sheriff’s deputy who used his mother’s former service weapon during the shooting.
However, just a little more than a mile from FSU, the Florida legislature is considering repealing a gun control law enacted following the 2018 Parkland massacre, in which 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
“It’s one of the most difficult things my wife and I have ever had to do: come home after learning about our daughter’s murder and explain it to her younger brother,” said Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was a freshman at Marjory Stoneman and one of those killed in the massacre.
A number of survivors of the shooting now attend FSU, including his late daughter’s classmates, Montalto told CBS News.
“After living through the MSD shooting in 2018, I never thought it would hit so close to home again,” FSU law student Josh Gallagher wrote on social media Thursday. “Then I’m in the FSU Law Library and hear the alarm: there’s an active shooter on campus.”
Whatever your politics, we need to meet—and something has to change. “Prayers for the victims and their families.”
Weeks after the tragedy, Florida passed comprehensive gun control legislation, including a ban on most people under the age of 21 from purchasing rifles and other long guns. Republican state leaders took the lead on the legislation at the time.
But seven years later, there is a renewed push to remove it from the books, with Republican politicians once again leading the way, this time in the opposite direction.
“It wasn’t a very good idea,” said Luis Valdes of the advocacy group Gun Owners of America. “And lawmakers have even admitted that they were emotionally high strung, and they made mistakes.”
The repeal of portions of the legislation passed the Florida House of Representatives last month on a mostly party-line vote, with most Republicans supporting it, but it appears that the Florida Senate will block the effort. Similar repeal efforts failed in 2023 and 2024. A federal appeals court upheld the law in 2023.
Federal law already prohibits people under the age of 21 from purchasing handguns. Despite the fact that Florida law prohibits people under the age of 21 from purchasing rifles and other long guns, state law allows them to receive firearms as gifts.
“You’re an adult at the age of 18,” Valdes said. “If they’re going to make the argument that we need to raise the age, then raise it for voting, raise it for getting into contracts, raise it for getting into being married.”
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz is a Marjory Stoneman graduate who became a state representative after Parkland and helped pass the first law. He rejects the notion that the legislation was motivated by emotion.
“Well, you know, they didn’t attend any of the funerals on any of these parents,” Moskowitz told me. “If they want to see emotion, go watch a parent eulogize their 14 year old as they’re putting them in a wooden box.”