Governor Ron DeSantis has now signed legislation expanding Florida’s so-called guardian program to public colleges and universities across the state. The move comes a little more than a year after the shooting at Florida State University that left two people dead and several others wounded outside the student union during finals week.
State officials are presenting the new law as a commonsense safety measure that will supposedly make campuses more secure by allowing trained faculty and staff members to carry firearms on campus after completing training with local sheriff’s offices.
Except what this law actually does is put more guns into schools and closer to students.
That’s the part that keeps getting glossed over every single time politicians start talking about “hardening” schools. The state can call these employees guardians all it wants, but they are still teachers, administrators, and staff members who now have access to firearms in environments filled with stressed-out students, crowded hallways, and emotionally charged situations.
Florida lawmakers are acting as if the mere presence of more armed adults automatically equals safety, even though there are countless examples showing that unsecured or improperly handled firearms in schools create dangers of their own.
I can’t even count how many stories I’ve posted over the years involving school employees leaving guns in bathrooms, desk drawers, backpacks, unlocked offices, locker rooms, or vehicles where students could get to them. There have been cases where children found firearms left behind by teachers or school resource officers.
Some incidents ended without tragedy through sheer luck. Others could have gone catastrophically wrong in seconds. Yet lawmakers continue pretending that introducing even more firearms into educational settings somehow reduces risk instead of multiplying the number of ways things can spiral out of control.
Supporters of the bill keep pointing to the required training. Under the new law, participating faculty and staff members must complete 144 hours of instruction, including 132 hours focused on firearms training.
That may sound impressive during a press conference, but it is nowhere near comparable to the kind of preparation law enforcement officers or military personnel receive over the course of their careers. Even then, extensive training is no guarantee that someone will respond effectively during the chaos of an active shooter situation.
Just look at Uvalde.
In case you needed reminding, nearly 400 law enforcement officers responded to the massacre in Uvalde. Many of them were armed and professionally trained, and yet they still failed to stop the shooter for more than an hour while children and teachers were trapped inside classrooms. That incident alone should have shattered the fantasy that simply putting more armed people near a shooting automatically saves lives.
Active shooter situations are chaotic, terrifying, and deeply confusing even for trained professionals. Expecting college employees with a summer training course to perform flawlessly under those circumstances feels more like political theater than actual public safety policy.
Another issue that people seem to keep forgetting is how these policies can complicate police responses. During an active shooter event, officers arriving on scene are already trying to identify the attacker in a rapidly evolving situation. Adding armed faculty members into the mix creates even more confusion.
Responding officers may have no immediate way of distinguishing between the shooter and a staff member carrying a weapon while running through a crowded campus. The possibility of mistaken identity or crossfire is not some far-fetched hypothetical. It’s an obvious risk.
Meanwhile, once again, the legislation completely avoids addressing the actual root problem behind school shootings in America, especially in states like Florida. Easy access to guns remains the constant factor in nearly every mass shooting.
Politicians like Meatball Ron continue talking about doors, locks, threat assessments, and armed staff while refusing to confront the fact that firearms are incredibly easy to obtain. Instead of limiting access to weapons for dangerous individuals or strengthening gun laws in meaningful ways, lawmakers keep responding to shootings by introducing even more guns into schools and offering nothing else besides ‘thoughts and prayers.’
That approach has become depressingly predictable. A shooting happens, public outrage follows, and legislators promise action. Then the ‘solution’ somehow always circles back to putting more guns into already tense environments while avoiding the larger conversation entirely. The result is that students are expected to accept armed campuses as normal while the underlying conditions that keep producing these tragedies remain largely untouched.
Florida officials insist this new law will make campuses safer. Maybe it will make some politicians feel safer. But those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
(Sources)
Leave a Reply