LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Whitney Austin knows what the wounded survivors of Thursday’s shooting at Florida State University will be experiencing now.
“If you're like me, you're praising God that you're alive and that you get another chance at life with your family. And then others take the path that I’m angry, angry this happened to me. Regardless of which camp you’re in, you'll need mental health support,” she said less than 24 hours after two people were killed on the Tallahassee campus.
Austin survived 12 gunshot wounds after an attacker opened fire inside Cincinnati’s 5/3 Bank in 2018. She has since devoted much of her life to the Whitney Strong foundation while fighting for Kentucky to adopt a common-sense, red flag gun law. It’s called CARR, Crisis Aversion & Rights Retention.
Whitney is a self-admitted gun owner, so she values the 2nd Amendment, and her bill is not about taking away a person’s gun or the right to own one. It’s about being able to temporarily take it from someone who is showing signs of being in distress, getting them professional counseling, and then returning their gun.
“Every time they show up in court, the default is the gun is going back to him or her, you have to prove that it's not going back to him or her, which is one of the things that makes CARR unique,” she said of the bill that has drawn bipartisan support in Kentucky, but has yet to be adopted into Kentucky law.
12 bullets didn’t stop her, and neither will any failed attempt to get CARR through the state legislature. She felt what happened in Tallahassee very profoundly, but it’s even worse when a shooting happens that doesn’t receive much publicity at all.
“I don't want you to go through this and I don't want your loved ones to go through this, so yeah, it hurts that people are numb to this,” she said.
