by Diane Roberts, Florida Phoenix
April 28, 2025

Thoughts and prayers.

On Thursday, April 17, a 20-year-old boy, a student, walked around FSU’s sunny campus, firing a handgun. Two dead; six injured.

The response from our elected leaders? The usual: “Thoughts and prayers.”

The governor of the State of Florida said he was “praying,” adding, “We are all Seminoles today.”

First Lady Casey DeSantis: “Praying.”

Sen. Rick Scott: Also “praying.”

The president of the United States called the attack “terrible, a shame,” then blew off any suggestion of gun control reform, saying he’s a “big advocate of the Second Amendment.”

Maybe he missed the praying memo.

I teach at FSU; and that Thursday afternoon, I was locked down in my office.

It was frightening, yes; it was also horribly familiar. This is America: Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Uvalde, Nashville, Parkland.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that several survivors of the 2018 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting were on campus that day.

Robbie Alhadeff’s sister Alyssa died at MSD: “Something has to change,” he said.

Graduate student Stephanie Horowitz saw people running and knew instantly what was happening.

Jason Leavy was a freshman at MSD when Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people. He knew, too, and started barricading his classroom door.

 “It’s the least surprising thing in the world, honestly,” he said.

Every one of those kids has been through multiple active shooter drills. Many faculty have, too.

We are supposed to shove desks against our doors, turn off the lights, “harden” our schools and churches and college campuses and act as though we’re grateful when politicians express their insincere and frankly insulting “sympathy.”

Nobody wants their feeble prayers and, as for their thoughts, if the violence-loving reactionaries in charge of this state were actually capable of thoughts they’d realize things do not have to be this way.

Priorities

From the state Capitol to the U.S. Capitol, politicians shrug: Guns matter more than people; children, high school students, college students — they don’t give the big money to political campaigns.

The Second Amendment trumps all the others.

We’re supposed to accept there’s nothing anyone can do: This is just the way things are.

As The Onion’s evergreen mass shooting headline goes, “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

But the kids ain’t all right; the kids are scared — and furious.

Last Tuesday, a group of FSU students braved the morally noxious fumes of the Capitol to demand sensible gun control, red flag laws, firearm storage legislation — commonsense stuff like that.

Madalyn Probst, president of the FSU College Democrats, said, “The fact that they are able to sit in this place and prioritize weapons over my life, my friends’ lives, and the lives of my community around me is deplorable.”

Problem is, the grown folks in charge don’t care.

The Florida House has approved a bill allowing 18-year-olds to buy guns, repealing a law they passed after the murders at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.

We don’t let them drink, but hell, they can get themselves a nice Taurus 9mm semi-automatic handgun — just like the one used to kill three and wound five at Michigan State University in 2023.

Here at FSU, you can still see the mountains of flowers and teddy bears where the wounded and dead fell. Yet the governor — who has the emotional intelligence of a poison dart frog —continues to push what he calls “Second Amendment Summer.”

If you’re buying a gun or ammo between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, you don’t have to pay sales tax.

Because we want more people packing heat.

‘Protecting’ children

The FSU atrocity was Florida’s sixth mass shooting and the 27th school shooting in the nation.

This year. So far.

The grown folks in charge are obsessed with “protecting” children from fluoride and potentially life-saving vaccines.

No letting them near books like “And Tango Makes Three,” lest they want to become gay.

No letting them discover trans people and queer people are real and deserving of dignity.

They can’t stand the thought of high schoolers reading Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” or “The 1619 Project,” lest they learn about the horrors of slavery.

They are terrified college students might study sociology, delve into political theories suggesting organizational models for the state that don’t insist our version of rapacious capitalism is the best, or encounter books that challenge religious or cultural orthodoxies.

As for sex, they don’t even want to think about it — unless, of course, the teenaged daughter gets pregnant or the teenaged son gets an STD.

They insist on shielding kids from a slew of normal human realities, but not gun violence.

It’s OK for young people to grow up knowing how to barricade themselves inside a classroom or learn strategies for evading a mass shooter but not appreciate poetry or play a musical instrument or master a foreign language.

It’s OK for them to live scared of that loner kid or that angry-looking guy or some person they can’t see, someone who wants to spill as much blood as possible.

The freedom to get a gun any time for any reason is more important.

So, we have Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Uvalde, Nashville, Parkland, and now FSU.

United Against Hate

One of my students reminded me there was supposed to be a “United Against Hate” symposium in honor of Maura Binkley on April 17.

Maura Binkley was the student shot and killed at a yoga studio in 2018 along with another woman.

The symposium was to promote campus safety, but it had to be canceled.

The FSU building where it should have taken place was a crime scene.

Maura Binkley was murdered by a guy who hated women.

The young man who allegedly walked around campus shooting his classmates hates people of color — he’s a Trump supporter and a white supremacist.

He told a fellow student Black people were ruining his neighborhood.

The United States government manufactures hatred against anyone who’s not a white Christian, embracing violence against its citizens.

Nowhere is safe.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This content shows a clear left-leaning bias through its critique of political leaders and policies, particularly those related to gun control and Second Amendment rights. The author condemns the “thoughts and prayers” response from politicians and advocates for stricter gun control measures. The piece also expresses frustration with the prioritization of guns over human lives, while highlighting the inadequacies of current political leadership in addressing mass shootings. Additionally, there is a strong criticism of conservative positions on issues like education, gender, and race. The tone and arguments presented are indicative of progressive viewpoints on these matters.