Days before the mass shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee, students at the school advocated against a Senate bill that would introduce temporary sales tax cuts on firearms and ammunition from September 8 until December 31.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the bill earlier this year when he declared there would be a “Second Amendment Summer.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel documented testimony from some of the students.
Dakota Bages, 20, is a college sophomore from Weston and one of many young people from Broward and Palm Beach counties who attend Florida State University, where the latest school shooting occurred Thursday.
She and others went to the Capitol last Tuesday to register their strong opposition to a Senate bill whose purpose is to get more people to buy guns.
As part of an array of tax cuts, Senate Bill 7034 exempts guns and ammunition from the 6% statewide sales tax for four months this year, from Sept. 8 until Dec. 31.
Bages said she believes in responsible gun ownership, and that her boyfriend’s stepfather, a retired Broward firefighter, safely owns and maintains firearms.
The students do not believe that it’s a good idea to put more guns into more and more hands in Florida.
“Until serious mental health reform is made in our state, we cannot make weapons any more accessible to people who seek to use them for the wrong reasons,” Bages told members of the Senate Finance & Tax Committee.
Bages said rural Putnam County near Jacksonville, which declared itself a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” had four times as many gun-related suicides as the state average in 2022 (the data is from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University).
Hellbound and Down 