ArcaMax

They were studying for finals and grabbing snacks from the student union on a gossamer spring day. Each flashcard and burrito and blanket on a lawn comprised the unspoken curriculum of life. A crop of new adults becoming who they will be.

And then the thing happened. Let's be honest, the thing they always knew was coming. The thing they've been training for their whole lives.

Today's university students were raised hiding, after all. They were raised preparing for shooters to invade their safe spaces between lunch and fourth period. They were raised learning the periodic table alongside how to stay quiet in a supply closet. They were raised locked in classrooms like prisoners, packing clear backpacks, walking through metal detectors, expecting the worst.

What happened on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee is still unfolding. It appears a young man, the son of a sheriff's deputy, took his mother's gun and opened fire Thursday, killing two and wounding more.

The future that adults promised those students has been fulfilled. They are grown-ups now, too, and their ghoulish burden grows heavier. Sprinting into strange dorms, hiding in bathroom stalls, trying to learn while trying not to die. Does it ever end?

America smiled with hollow eyes and handed them this reality long ago. When 20 elementary children and six adults were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, and again when 17 souls were erased from a high school in Parkland, Florida, and again when 19 kids and two adults were obliterated in Uvalde, Texas. Reports are filtering in that several FSU students survived the Parkland shooting only to end up back in this nightmare of muscle memory.

Of course they did. Every Floridian knows someone who knows someone on that campus. We all watched our feeds as friends panicked and rejoiced for their kids. We scrolled through photos of students hugging and crying and marching single file with hands in the air.

Of course we did.

Again and again, America has chosen gun fetishism and cartoonish ideas of freedom over the complex task of safety. Arch conservatives and activists have fought tooth and nail for the right to be reckless, to let whatever happens happen in the name of a nebulous notion that regulation of deadly weapons is at odds with liberty.

After the Parkland shooting, Florida legislators made a real effort to work toward stronger gun safety protocols, raising the minimum age to buy rifles or shotguns, closing loopholes and enacting a red flag law to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. A Columbia University study found the latter law was linked to an 11% reduction in firearm homicide rates.

Now Florida lawmakers are trying to reverse progress. At the Capitol, about a 30-minute walk from FSU, Gov. Ron DeSantis is aggressively aligning with gun activists to roll back restrictions. He believes people should be allowed to carry firearms openly the way one carries a cellphone. In his view, Florida is lagging behind other red states in helping people more easily get their hands on guns.

Why? One argument often goes that Americans must be able to protect themselves from an authoritarian takeover. That common folk should be able to mount artillery strength in the event the government goes too far, that a ruler seeks absolute power, that a maniacal person starts ignoring court edicts and neglecting the core principles upon which the framers built this nation.

How is that going? The rising up?

But even in the darkest moments, there is cause for hope. The bid to roll back the age requirement is stalled in the Senate, where similar bills have withered in the past. A bill to allow concealed weapons on school or college campuses failed in a Florida Senate committee last month. For those saying, "Well, that didn't stop this tragedy," no, it didn't. That is no reason to stop trying. That is no reason to think it didn't stop something else.

President Donald Trump has signaled no desire to change gun laws at the federal level. But the mission to save lives survives with each leader willing to take a sensible stand, to think creatively, to join in pushing uphill the boulder that will slow this country's culture of death.

That's part of becoming an adult, too. Finding the ability to believe that systems and people can change even when evolution seems like a fantasy.

Through all their rightful, righteous anger and tears, let these new adults find comfort in community, in the surplus of friends and strangers willing to provide shelter, hugs and check-in texts. Let them believe that most people really are still good.

And let them see fit, in their journey to become who they will become, to take that 30-minute walk to the Capitol presiding over their college town. Let them say, once and for all, that they have had enough of living this way.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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