Details are still emerging from this afternoon’s mass shooting at a Jacksonville, Florida video game tournament. The event took place at an area called the Jacksonville Landing, a waterfront venue for all types of public events such as concerts, festivals, etc. As is the case in well over 90% of mass shootings, the Jacksonville Landing is a gun-free zone.
Here’s the relevant section from the Landing’s rules of conduct:
So just to recap, carrying a firearm on Landing property is prohibited. As, of course, is murder. And yet those prohibitions didn’t affect the shooter today.
It’s a good bet that no one attending the video game tournament was armed, even in the state with the most concealed carry licenses in the nation. Why? Because licensed gun owners are, by their very nature, assiduously law-abiding. And that means there was probably no one in the crowd today who could have responded in a defensive way when the shooter opened fire.
We’re sure to hear plenty of calls for still more restrictions on the sales, ownership and carrying of firearms in the days and weeks ahead. Will Florida’s legislators enact still more common sense gun control laws? You can be sure many of them will try. Again. Renewed efforts to enact an “assault weapons” ban and magazine capacity limits seem like a good bet.
The only thing we can be perfectly sure of is that nothing Florida’s lawmakers or governor does or says will do a single thing to prevent another shooting like this in another gun-free zone. And so it goes.