On April 17, 2025, a gunman entered the campus of Florida State University, killing two people and injuring six others.
Phoenix Ikner, 20, an FSU undergraduate student from Tallahassee, is being charged with the murder of Coach Robert Morales, a local legend who coached high school football and ensured students had access to allergen-free food and Tiru Chabba, a South Carolinian food service executive visiting Florida State in his job capacity.
A lack of gun control didn’t cause this tragedy; Ikner used his parents’ firearms, which he could legally access. While there is no ironclad solution to the issue of gun violence, a group of FSU students has developed a three-part proposal that will attempt to mitigate the risk associated with school shootings on college campuses.
We propose three bills: the ACCESS Act, the ARMOR Act and the AGENT Act.
The ACCESS Act addresses a long-standing issue for college students, an incredibly vulnerable group when it comes to mental health: knowledge of and access to resources. This act creates the Office of Mental Health Services to provide oversight and coordinate mental health resources for students in Florida’s public university system. This will bring additional licensed mental health practitioners to campus to ensure that students have access to specialized care and to help train existing staff on specialized mental health care practices.

The act requires that licensed professionals perform a portion of mental health care along with students pursuing clinical hours.
Unfortunately, mental health counseling can only do so much to prevent gun violence. To fill those gaps, we wrote the ARMOR Act, a bill to ensure that every classroom door across the 110 campuses within Florida’s public higher education system can be locked from the inside in an emergency.
While the ARMOR Act mitigates risk, the AGENT Act allows students the right to protect themselves from armed threats like we faced this past April. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Gun Free School Zones (GFSZ) Act to address the problem of campus gun violence. However, this measure sets a target on our schools as a space where people cannot practically respond to armed threats.
The AGENT Act, following 18 USC §922 (q)(3)(B)(iv), will allow for campus carry in the state of Florida.
This bill will help to eliminate the soft target for terror that has become our schools, while establishing common sense measures for campus carry. The AGENT Act requires concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits to carry on campus.

This is an essential distinction between the formal laws of constitutional carry in Florida, as the CCW permit requires live fire proficiency tests.
Our bill requires an annual live-fire test to permit campus carry. Another requirement is regular mental health check-ins under the newly created Office of Mental Health Services or a similar institution on private campuses.
The AGENT Act also borrows from the Georgian and West Virginian systems of campus carry, which have restrictions on where firearms are allowed on campus. Many of these restrictions are common sense.
For example, concealed carry would not be permitted in on-campus day cares to avoid the risk of having a firearm in the proximity of infants and young children.
Another example would be areas with “adequate security measures,” which are defined as areas employing electronic devices and armed staff at public entrances to prevent people from bringing in weapons. Within secured areas, the need for an armed citizenry is lessened, especially given the armed presence associated.
Between mental health measures, campus safety enhancements, and common sense legislation on campus carry, we can turn this tragedy into positive change. We, the students, demand that the Florida Legislature pass these measures and urge you, the people, to ask the same of your elected officials.
With your help, we can ensure the safety of the future of our nation and its students.
As legislators prepare for the 2025 Session, we have spent the past few months speaking with Senators and Representatives about potentially sponsoring our legislation.
We have been met with nothing but positive support within our state Legislature for these conservative solutions to a senseless problem.
We can be reached at [email protected] for questions and comments.
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Reid Seybold is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science at FSU. Noah Brown is pursuing a master’s degree in applied American politics.
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