A Florida charter high school has left Americans absolutely horrified after it was revealed that the school has been raffling off guns and various other weaponry as part of a month-long fundraising campaign that ended on Wednesday — more than a week after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and slaughtered 19 innocent children and 2 beloved teachers with an AR-15 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
James Madison Preparatory High School in Madison, Florida, began a $100-per-ticket raffle on the 2nd of May, where winners could receive prizes such as hunting gear, fishing gear, and weapons, including handguns and semi-automatic rifles.
Despite the fact that the nation was sent reeling by not just one, but two mass shootings — the racially-motivated Buffalo supermarket shooting in New York and the recent Uvalde elementary school massacre that saw 31 people killed between the two of them — the charter school’s gun-fueled fundraising raffle proceeded pretty much entirely unimpeded.
Nancy Fry, a volunteer for the Florida chapter of Moms Demand Action in Broward County, said of the raffle, “Giveaways like this emphasize the need for background checks on all gun sales and transfers.”
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Unsurprisingly so, gun laws in the state of Florida are especially nauseating, as background checks are not required in the state on transfers and unlicensed sales of firearms. The performance of a background check in FL is only required by licensed sellers.
A flyer for the school’s raffle did not include whether or not a background check would be conducted on the winners of the firearms in connection to the fundraiser.
“This giveaway does not promote safe gun ownership, which should go hand in hand with hunting and with sport shooting,” Fry added. “This is just an unnecessary abdication of a school’s duty to keep their students and community safe.”
Video footage purportedly hailing from the controversial raffle has made its way to Facebook, posted to the school’s Facebook page on Tuesday, exactly one week after Salvador Ramos slaughtered 21 people with an AR-15.
“Everyone needs a Remington 97,” says one man in the clip, as two men spin a tumbler full of papers while pumping up the prizes available to the winner. The school’s assistant principal Patrick White, pulls names out of the tumbler.
Ultimately, the charter school did take a very short-lived break from the raffle in the wake of the Uvalde massacre, with principal Mark Akerman writing in a Facebook post on May 25th, “Out of respect for these tragic events, we will not have a raffle drawing this morning. We will resume raffle drawings on Tuesday, May 31. God bless each of you and your families.”
The flyer for the event did note that all entrants “Must meet all federal and state regulations.”
“We take school safety extremely seriously at James Madison. Since its inception, the safety and security of our students and staff has always been our priority,” James Madison Preparatory High School principal Mark Akerman said in an email on Wednesday, claiming that the raffle items were owned by a local sporting goods store, where all winners would be subject to all state and federal requirements, including background checks.
Akerman claimed that none of the raffle prizes were ever present on school property, and winners were required to go pick up their items from the sporting goods store.
Read a full report on the matter here.
Featured image via screen capture
