He Used His Mama’s Gun: A Note on Power, Whiteness, and the Real Threat
The Florida State shooter was a 20-year-old white man—the son of a sheriff’s deputy.
He used her gun.
And still, somehow, no one is asking if maybe the police have too many weapons. No one is questioning whether blue lives are arming domestic terrorism from their kitchen tables.
Because we all know: if this were a Black mama? If her son had borrowed her weapon and committed a mass shooting?
They’d have burned her entire family tree to the ground on Fox News by noon.
But here we are.
Two dead. Six wounded. And barely a whisper about what we already know:
That the most dangerous demographic in this country is not Black men. It’s not undocumented immigrants. It’s not gang members or people on welfare.
It’s white, cisgender men raised on a steady diet of exceptionalism, entitlement, and inherited violence.
We Have Never Been the Threat.
Black and Brown people are labeled “violent” for surviving. For running. For breathing too loud in public space. But you know what we’ve never done?
We’ve never shot up a school. Or a concert. Or a movie theater. Never bombed a church, Yeshiva school or neighborhood.
We are the most criminalized, surveilled, and incarcerated communities on the planet—and yet we have never, not once, unleashed mass violence on strangers in the way white men have.
Even our “most hardened criminals” aren’t shooting up schools.
But every time one of them does? We are still the ones who get the frisk, the traffic stop, the school lockdown.
So What’s the Real Issue?
It’s not just guns. It’s not just access. It’s not even just mental health.
The issue is power.
The issue is what happens when the oppressor of the GLOBE begins to feel powerless. When the ones who were taught the world was theirs—start realizing it never was.
Because whiteness is not a race—it’s a system of power, born from colonialism and sharpened through capitalism. And when that system starts to crack, its most loyal subjects don’t dismantle it—they detonate.
They do not grieve the loss of power.
They retaliate.
This isn’t new.
It’s Tulsa. It’s Wilmington. It’s every lynching disguised as law and every badge that came with a gun and a grievance.
It is what happens when white male violence goes unchecked because it is so deeply baked into the structure of this country that to confront it would mean questioning everything America believes about itself.
The Police Aren’t Protecting Us. They’re Arming Themselves.
So here’s a question:
If the son of a police officer can walk into a school and shoot people with her weapon, should we take the guns from the police?
Because you can’t have it both ways.
You can’t call Black kids a threat or “super predators” because they wear hoodies and listen to trap music—and then hand your untrained son access to your weapon and pretend you didn’t load the chamber yourself.
This Is Not a Crisis. It’s a Pattern.
Every time this happens, we pretend it’s an anomaly.
But white male violence is not random.
It’s predictable.
It’s preventable.
It’s protected.
It’s built on the myth that some lives are more valuable than others, and that violence is a justifiable response to losing status.
That’s why it’s not just mass shootings—it’s insurrections.
It’s Proud Boys. It’s “You Will Not Replace Us.”
It’s Stand Your Ground laws and open carry and “he was having a bad day.”
It’s grief twisted into grievance.
Loss weaponized into entitlement.
And it’s killing people.
So Let’s Be Clear.
This isn’t about gun rights.
It’s about who this country believes has the right to be angry—and who has the right to live.
It’s about who we disarm in the name of peace, and who we arm in the name of power.
It’s about the fact that the most violent criminals in this country keep getting born into blue lives and trained in bootcut khakis and baseball caps.
So no—I don’t want another “thoughts and prayers” moment.
I want abolition.
Of the systems that raised this boy.
Of the badges that armed him.
Of the silence that protects him.
Because this is not a one-off.
It is America—being exactly what it was built to be.
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Fact Check This:
• The Vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are committed by white men.
• Black and Brown people have never been the demographic responsible for school shootings.
• Police are almost never held accountable when their weapons are used by family members in crimes.
• Gun violence is often rooted in domestic violence and white grievance—not gang activity or poverty.
In solidarity and liberation,
Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen