Then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a gun control package that included a red flag law less than a month after the February 14, 2018, Parkland high school shooting, but that red flag law did not prevent Saturday’s Jacksonville attack.
The gun control package also raised the minimum age for rifle purchases from 18 to 21, CNN noted. That gun control failed to stop the August 26, 2023, Jacksonville shooting at at a Dollar General store.
The gun control package also banned bump stocks and implemented an across-the-board three-day waiting period on all gun purchases. Neither the ban nor the waiting period posed a hindrance to the shooting that took three lives in Jacksonville on Saturday.
Less than a year after Gov. Scott signed the gun control package, Breitbart News reported that it failed to stop a shooting that killed five people in Sebring, Florida.
A 21-year-old went into Sebring’s SunTrust Bank and opened fire, killing five people. He then called police and reported himself, stating he had shot the individuals. None of the post-Parkland gun controls prevented the shooting.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
