A campus rape survivor is speaking out about guns on college campuses, saying that she could have fended off her attacker had she been legally carrying a gun.
Three years ago, Shayna Lopez-Rivas was sexually assaulted on Florida State University’s campus. Today she’s advocating for campuses to allow permitted students to carry guns on campus, so they can protect themselves from an assault like the one she went through.
“He had a knife, I had pepper spray,” Lopez-Rivas told News 4 JAX. “And even though I ran for blue lights that are scattered all around, [he was] faster, stronger, and I did not win. . . The way that I carry [my gun] now, I would have been able to prevent what happened to me.”
In Florida, college students are banned from carrying guns on campus. If a student does carry a gun, he or she must leave it in a parked car, secured in a lock box. The Florida legislature has recently tried, unsuccessfully, to make it legal for students with permits to be armed on campus.
The issue of allowing guns on campuses has gained in attention recently. For two years in a row, students at the University of Austin, Texas, have protested the campus’s decision to allow students with permits to carry concealed weapons on campus by carrying plastic, phallus-shaped objects, which are banned on campus.
