“Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R) joined with Democrats three weeks before the Florida State University (FSU) shooting and rejected legislation that would have allowed students to be armed for self-defense,” Breitbart reported Thursday. “Garcia crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats, killing SB 814 and eliminating the opportunity for college and university students to be armed for self-defense.”
It’s not the first time she’s done that. In 2023, she was the lone Republican defecting to the Democrats to vote against permitless carry. Opposition to that, of course, is based on prejudice and the completely unfounded presumption that such laws mean criminals will take advantage of being able to “legally carry”
Real-world experience with that has proven exactly the opposite. Just as gun prohibitionists in the early days of permitted carry predicted “Dodge City/blood in the streets” carnage which not only never materialized but instead proved a beneficial deterrent to crime (findings by John Lott of the Crime Prevention Resource Center show “ Civilians with permits stopped [active shooter] attacks more frequently and faced a lower risk of being killed or injured than police”) permitless carry is likewise proving to make society safer. Case in point, in my home state, Ohio, “a study has found that gun crime rates have decreased in six of the eight largest cities in the state” since the law was passed seven months ago.
No matter. Garcia doubles down on X.com, declaring, “I made a decision based on reason rather than partisan politics. Your suggestion that students should defend themselves by carrying firearms on campus, along with the idea that a bill lacking a house companion would have made any real difference, is misguided.”
“I have zero regret,” she continued. “Proud to have voted against your moronic campus carry bill, that didn’t have a house companion. This decision wasn’t about partisan politics; it was rooted in common sense.”
Armed self-defense is “moronic.” Voting against it is “common sense.”
You’d think, being the daughter of Cuban exiles admitted into this country, she’d appreciate the freedoms recognized here and not in the tyranny her parents fled. Especially since, in order t take office, she had to swear an oath to the Constitution. Instead, she’s embracing the same citizen disarmament mandates imposed by Cuban communists under the dictator Fidel Castro, who asserted only his ruling regime should have guns, and dismissed the idea of the people having them with the contemptuous question:
¿Armas para que?
As for the benefit of guns on campus in the hands of students old enough to marry, vote, and serve in the military, the whole world saw how they can deter just such a campus shooting event at the University of Texas back in 1966:
In the absence of any visible police presence, students decided to defend themselves…Graduate student James Damon retrieved his $15 M1 carbine and helped keep the murderer pinned down. Senior Cliff Drummond recalled “Students with deer rifles … firing like crazy back at the Tower.”
It worked. They kept the killer pinned down, unable to claim more victims, and allowing police time to take him out.
Who applied “reason” and “common sense,” Rep. Garcia? Would you dismiss them as “moronic”?
But she’s not done with her meltdown outburst, this time taking a page right out of the Democrat playbook, throwing down the “Latina” card, complaining of “hateful rhetoric,” and adding the hyperbolic lie that permitless carry bill sponsor Randy Fine was “inciting violence against me because he’s a racist.”
That’s just childish; she not only votes like a Democrat, she fights like one. Calling people who have a different ideology racist is right up there with calling conservatives Nazis and fascists (and desperately disregards the reality that Hitler and Mussolini were both documented socialists.)
And her ugly accusation doesn’t account for two Cuban Americans it has been my privilege to know, both strong advocates for the Second Amendment because they experienced firsthand the evils, misery, and terror a monopoly of violence can inflict on an unarmed populace.
She should read (we all should) America, Guns, and Freedom by Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Jr., a retired surgeon and medical journal editor who escaped from Cuba as a boy with his father. She should study the work of the late producer/director Agustin Blasquez, another great patriot who fled Cuban communism and who fully understood the necessity to freedom that armed citizens are.
Would their disagreeing with her make them “racist”? How about “moronic”?
This obnoxiously incompetent self-server has no business making law. And the Republican party can’t afford to keep foisting unabashed infringers on gun owners, because once they realize that voting for her is no different than voting for a damn Democrat, why should they?
Primary her arrogant hindquarters, GOP. And block her from rising any higher in the party. It’s time to give this trivial ignoramus more than zero regrets for spitting on the rights of the constituency that put your party in the majority.
Or don’t, take the fire out of the belly of your base, and let gun owners sit on their hands next time out. It’s not like a Democrat winning will make any difference over a Vichycon getting elected, and those of us who are serious about them don’t let silly prohibitionists define our freedoms anyway.
Figure it out or feel our pain.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
