THE NRA IS CALLING ALL THE SHOTS ON GUN SAFETY IN FLORIDA

…The NRA’s “real” logo

 

Still the NRA’s motto:  “The only defense  for a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun”

 

If you want to see just how strong the NRA is in local politics, one only needs to consider what happened after the deadliest school massacre in Florida’s history.

 

Just a couple of days after 17 students and teachers were gunned down at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County Florida, Florida lawmakers refused to consider a bill banning assault-style rifles.

But one hour later, those same legislators passed a resolution declaring that pornography endangers teenage health.

I’m sorry, but to my understanding, I am not aware that pornography has ever been used to slaughter teenagers.

 

Oh, and this all occurred as the survivors of that high school massacre watched the lawmakers pass this porn resolution from the Florida legislator gallery.

 

I had spent many days working in business in the state of Florida.

 

If you have ever visited southern Florida, or the Florida Keys, or the Miami area, you might have thought that Florida was a very liberal state.  But once you head north toward Tampa, Fort Lauderdale or Orlando, the northern area and the Florida panhandle are very conservative compared to Miami.

 

As I had learned, that part of the state well north of Miami is sometimes referred to as the “Gunshine State”.  It is said that the “Gunshine state prefers the Second Amendment to the First Amendment.”

 

As an example, one time while visiting Florida on business, I was asked if I would like to play golf at a beautiful country club located on the edge of the Everglades area.  When we arrived at the club, the local businessman I was with took out a rifle and a hand gun along with his golf clubs.  When I asked what that was all about, he casually said “You never know when you might be surprised by an angry alligator on the golf course.”  And sure enough, as we were playing golf, we had to skip a par 3 hole where there were two alligators sunning themselves on the green.

While visiting those southern states from Texas to South Carolina, I became very aware as to how conservative and how important the NRA is in those states.

 

If you don’t live there, you may not be aware of Florida’s most notorious law, the “Stand Your Ground” law.  This is the 2005 NRA-backed gun law that says a person who feels threatened has no requirement to retreat before engaging in deadly force, even outside their home.

This law contributed to the release of the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and the law has been linked to an increase in Florida homicides.

 

The state of Florida state has basically placed the interests of the National Rifle Association (NRA) above the interests of all Floridians.

 

But the “Stand Your Ground” law is hardly the only case of extreme Floridian deference to the gun lobby.  There was also the “Docs vs. Glocks” issue where a 2011 NRA-supported law restricted a doctors’ right for asking their patients if they owned a gun, or to talk to them about firearm safety.  Fortunately, a federal court recently struck down that law based on First Amendment grounds.

 

Before that, the state legislature had also granted shooting ranges widespread immunity from environmental laws.

And just why would they do that?  Because the NRA complained that environmental protection agencies (EPA) wanted to make gun ranges pay for the decades’ worth of bullet lead that was leaching into the local water supplies.

 

Because of the NRA’s efforts, Floridians can today set up private shooting ranges in their back yards.  And these firing ranges have no restrictions on what kinds of weapons or the time of day you can shoot.  Obviously, this was going to eventually be a problem.  Two years ago, a 14-year-old girl in Collier County, Florida, was standing inside her home when she was struck in the hand by a stray bullet from her neighbor’s target range.

 

Yes, many sane Floridians have complained to local officials about these issues, but the towns mayors and commissioners say that their hands are tied because other state laws bar municipalities from enacting virtually any regulation related to firearms. .

 

These ant-restrictions laws were passed in 2011, after the NRA complained about municipal efforts to restrict home gun ranges, impose trigger-lock requirements, and ban guns in public parks, libraries and city halls.

 

It is amazing that the NRA is so strong, and this is in a state that is supposed to be dedicated to home rule.  Unfortunately, Florida is under the NRA rules.

These NRA backed laws also go a lot further than the usual state laws restricting localities from regulating mundane things such as the minimum wages. 

 

The laws are so strict that, if municipal officials pass a firearms-related law, they will be required to pay a $5,000 fine and probably lose their jobs. No, I’m not kidding.  These same officials can also be forced to pay up to $100,000 in damages by any “person or an organization whose membership is adversely affected by any ordinance”.  And what memberships are they referring to?  Yes, memberships such as in the NRA. 

 

Beam Furr, the current Broward County mayor, has said that he’d love to consider county-level gun-control measures such as a gun registry, a ban on assault-style weapons, or even just a requirement that more information from school and mental-health records get added to background checks. But he added that if he pursued these options, “by law, I’d lose my job.” 

 

However, another mayor, Frank Ortis of Pembroke Pines, wonders whether a different approach might be better.  Maybe to pass a new gun-control ordinance, and see what happens. “Come and get me,” he said.  These gun control needs are not idle arguments, not to parents and students in towns like Parkland

 

And certainly not to Annabel Claprood, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sophomore. Last week the gunman tapped on her Spanish class’s door, before concluding that the room was empty and Mr. Cruz shot up the next classroom instead.  Ms. Claprood thought she was coping okay. Then, a couple of days later, she accidentally locked her boss out of the restaurant where she works. When he shook the door, she hit the floor and curled into the fetal position.  Annabel Claprood lives with her mother and grandmother, who had previously pooled their resources to buy a house in the affluent Parkland school district and get her out of a dangerous neighborhood in North Fort Lauderdale. 

 

“We moved here so she could be safer,” said her grandmother, Doris Goldberg. “Now look what’s happened.”

I believe that nowhere in Florida is truly safe, especially as long as the NRA is calling the shots.

 

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