Before anything else: people were murdered at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and others were wounded and traumatized. Whatever policy argument follows, it follows from that grief, not around it. I’m Lance Rankin, a firearms dealer in Texas, and I want to talk about what this attack says about gun-free zones, carefully and without the cable-news volume.
Where the attack happened matters
The shooting took place in an airport terminal, one of the most thoroughly gun-restricted public spaces in the country. Every law-abiding traveler in that building was disarmed by policy. The attacker was not stopped by any of it. That’s not a gotcha, it’s the sober starting point: the rules that guaranteed his victims couldn’t shoot back did not restrain him, because someone prepared to commit mass murder is not deterred by a weapons policy.
This pattern isn’t unique to Fort Lauderdale. Attackers planning this kind of violence tend to strike where resistance is least likely, and posted gun-free zones advertise exactly that. The zone doesn’t create the evil, but it concentrates the vulnerability.
What a gun-free zone actually accomplishes
A sign prohibiting firearms filters people by conscientiousness, not by dangerousness. The traveler with a carry permit locks her pistol in the car or checks it, because she follows rules. The person willing to murder strangers has already decided rules don’t apply to him. The policy’s entire practical effect lands on the people who were never a threat, and their only remaining options when violence starts are running and hiding.
I’d add one observation, made without heat: many of the officials most committed to expanding these zones move through the world with armed protection. I don’t begrudge them their security. I’d just like the same consideration extended to the people in baggage claim.
The first minutes belong to whoever is there
Law enforcement responded to this attack, as they do, with courage. But no police force on earth can be everywhere in the first ninety seconds, and the first minutes are when most of the dying happens. In that window, the only people who can act are the ones already present. Policy that guarantees every one of them is unarmed is a bet that nothing will ever go wrong, placed on behalf of people who never agreed to it.
None of this means an armed citizen would certainly have changed the outcome in Fort Lauderdale. Honesty requires saying so. It means the possibility was removed in advance, by design, and the design failed to remove the threat it was aimed at.
Blame the man, fix the incentives
After every attack, some of the reaction rushes past the individual who did it and lands on the industry, the tool, or lawful owners as a class. I understand the impulse to do something. But the productive somethings look different: take the perpetrator’s history seriously, examine the failure points that let him through, and rethink policies whose main measurable effect is disarming the law-abiding. Reflexively expanding the very zones where these attacks keep occurring isn’t prevention. It’s repetition.
My condolences to the victims and their families. They deserved better than a policy that assumed a sign would protect them.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
