Florida State freshman Stephanie Galdamez joined other students at press conference in front of the Old Capitol building in Tallahassee on April 23, 2025. Credit: Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix

Six days after the shootings at Florida State University, students marched approximately three miles from campus to the Capitol Wednesday morning to demand state lawmakers do more to protect them and the rest of the state from gun violence.

The episode in Tallahassee last Thursday ended in two deaths and six people wounded, including the shooter.

“While we didn’t ask for this burden, this is our generation’s fight,” said Andres Perez, president of the FSU chapter of Students Demand Action. “We will rise up and make our voices heard and demand changes so that no other person has to endure the tragedy and trauma that we face.”

The event was organized by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group formed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg after the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Members of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots arm of Everytown, and Students Demand Action, another affiliated group, were also in attendance.

Perez criticized the state’s Republican leadership for “trying to weaken gun safety laws,” referring specifically to the proposal passed in the state House that would lower the age to buy firearms from 21 to 18. “We cannot let that happen,” he said.

As it stands, 10 days away from the scheduled conclusion of the 60-day legislative session, that measure is not expected to become law, as a Senate companion bill was never heard in any committee. Similar proposals to reduce the age to purchase a firearm died in both the 2023 and 2024 sessions without moving at all in the Senate.

Broward County Democratic Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, who served as mayor of Parkland in 2018 when the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School occurred, said the longterm harm to people affected by gun violence is “terrible.”

“The taking away of feeling any sense of security and safety at all times,” she said. “Life is no longer normal once you have been experiencing the aftermath of a mass shooting. Life never goes back to normal. And we have to understand that as citizens. We have to understand that as lawmakers where we get the motivation to make sure that this never happens again.”

Hunschofsky was elected to serve in the Florida House nine months after the Parkland tragedy, and said she has faithfully sponsored legislation every year called the “Responsible Gun Ownership Act.”

“It starts with responsible gun ownership,” she said. “It starts with universal background checks. It starts with, if you own a gun, you need to store it safely so that it doesn’t get into the hands of someone who shouldn’t be having a gun in their hands. Let’s be clear. None of this violates the Second Amendment. None of this is radical. This is about with rights comes responsibilities.”

However, that bill once again did not move at all this session.

“Let’s be very clear — this is not normal. This is not freedom, and this is a failure of leadership,” said South Florida Democratic Sen. Lori Berman. “We live in a state where our leaders are actively making it easier to access guns.”

Logan Rubenstein, a 21-year-old junior at Florida State University, said he was in the eight grade and in middle school when Parkland happened approximately one mile away.

He praised then-Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-controlled Legislature for passing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public School Safety Act just weeks later, which in addition to raising the age to buy a firearm added a three-day waiting period between the purchase and delivery of a firearm, or until the background check is completed, whichever comes later. The law allows a court to issue a risk-protection order for up to 12 months and requires the surrender of all firearms and ammunition if such an order is issued (better known as a “red flag” law).

“For the last six years I’ve had to beg lawmakers to not reverse those reforms,” Rubenstein said.

Stephanie Galdamez, a 19-year-old FSU freshman who grew up in Tampa, held a sign listing other gun massacres over the past two decades and reading, “How many more?”

“I think for it to be a tragedy it’s not enough to describe what happened, because it keeps happening over and over again,” she said. “It’s truly an American problem which keeps occurring and recurring and it’s preventable and yet it’s the number one killer of youth in America and we just want lawmakers to actually start doing things about it.”

About a half-hour after the press conference, North Florida Republican Sen. Corey Simon, a former football star at FSU, grew emotional when asked to give the prayer to begin Wednesday’s proceedings in the Senate.

“Today I rise and ask for a moment of silence for my Seminole family as we mourn those lives and the many lives that have been changed forever,” he said, before breaking down. Senate colleagues from both sides of the aisle reached out to hug and comfort him.

There have been four mass shootings in Florida this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

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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