Three top officials with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) including President Randi Weingarten, have gone full-anti-gun in reaction to a triple homicide last Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida, following what appears to have been a racially motivated attack at a Dollar General store—having nothing to do with education or school campuses—raising a question about why they even did it.
However, the top lawman in the community, Sheriff T.K. Waters, “dismantled the narrative that guns are to blame for the tragedy” during a press conference, Fox News reported. His remarks came about 13 minutes into a press briefing held Sunday and broadcast by the network.
Sheriff Waters’ comments were in stark contrast to Weingarten’s press release, in which she was joined by AFT Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus and Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram, according to a release from the organization.
In her remarks, Weingarten took a swipe at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing earlier this year a new law allowing permitless carry in the Sunshine State. She said this is “just one of a slew of policies taking the state in the wrong direction.”
But Sheriff Waters told reporters Sunday, “The story’s always about guns. It’s the people that [are] bad.”
“This guy’s a bad guy,” Waters continued. “If I could take my gun off right now and lay it on this counter, nothing will happen. It’ll sit there. But as soon as a wicked person grabs ahold of that handgun and starts shooting people with it, there’s the problem. The problem is the individual.”
The shooting received national attention because of the racial element, but there was a decidedly anti-gun sentiment in the AFT news release.
“We cannot keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result,” DeJesus said. “As long as both unfettered access to guns and racial animus are not only allowed to persist but encouraged by the highest level of elected officials in Florida, our kids, grandkids, parents, grandparents, friends and loved ones will continue to be terrorized by gun violence and racism run amok. As educators, we demand action to stop the madness, and we hold everyone who has been affected in our hearts.”
But Sheriff Waters repeatedly told reporters that Florida retailers who sold the guns did everything correctly and followed the law. There was, he said several times, nothing in the gunman’s background to flag a denial of sale.
According to Newsweek, the suspect—identified by authorities as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter—was carrying a semi-auto rifle and handgun. He took his own life as law enforcement responded.
During the Sunday news update, Sheriff Waters said the guns were legally purchased, and the retailers who sold them did everything required by law.
“Now guns are a tool that people use to do horrible things,” the sheriff stressed. “But it’s the individuals that wield these things.”
The takeaway is that this comes down to a question of whose narrative is credible, the sheriff whose agency is investigating the murders or a trio at the helm of a national education organization apparently trying to insert themselves into a story.
Vox added some perspective to the unfolding drama, explaining how “every country has people with mental health issues,” but the difference in the U.S. is that private firearms ownership is “ingrained in politics, in culture, and in the law since the nation’s founding.” The reference is, of course, to the Second Amendment, which recognizes and protects the right of the people—individual citizens, according to the Supreme Court—to keep and bear arms.
The Vox story quoted Wake Forest University Prof. David Yamane, described as a man who “studies American gun culture.”
“America is unique in that guns have always been present, there is wide civilian ownership, and the government hasn’t claimed more of a monopoly on them,” Yamane told the news organ.
Another academic who spoke to Vox—Duke University Prof. Jeffrey Swanson—said other countries regulate handguns to “broadly limit access” to them, while in the U.S. “because of the way that the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment,” sidearms are more prevalent.
But in this case, Palmeter was also armed with a rifle, on the side of which he painted a Swastika, and it appears from different video snips he used that gun primarily.
While Sheriff Waters said detectives will continue their investigation until they can determine a motive—the killer left more than one “manifesto,” according to published reports—and academics weigh in with their observations, it was Waters who probably summed it up best.
Quoted by Newsweek, the sheriff stated during one of his media briefings, “Any loss of life is tragic, but the hate that motivated the shooter’s killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak. There’s no place for hate in our community, and this is not Jacksonville. As a member of this Jacksonville community, I’m sickened by this cowardly shooter’s personal ideology of hate.”
According to data from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Licensing, as of July 31, there were 2,564,955 active Florida concealed weapon licenses. Many of those are held by non-Florida residents. There has been no indication the Jacksonville killer had a carry license.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.