Guns haven’t been a big issue in recent Florida political campaigns, but current events should thrust the never-ending controversy into this year’s races.
With a gun-control debate roiling Congress, and President Biden dramatizing the issues with visits to scenes of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the news media are eagerly promoting a cross-fire of accusations and counter-claims by local, legislative and congressional candidates. Last week’s vote in the U.S. House on some much-compromised gun measures broke down along party lines and, in the coming campaigns, we can expect a stark Republican-Democrat split.
Essentially, Democrats are for gun control, promising it will somehow keep weapons away from criminals. Republicans tell voters any new laws inevitably infringe on the Second Amendment — and are an ominous first step toward disarming law-abiding citizens.
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Democrats in the Florida Legislature this month have tried to call a special session on guns, but there’s no real prospect of getting the required three-fifths of the membership to sign on.
Even if the House and Senate called themselves into session, the majority Republicans wouldn’t pass anything serious, and nothing would get past Gov. Ron DeSantis. But the Democrat-Republican division is good campaign fodder for both parties. And both sides have legitimate talking points, along with plenty of exaggeration and hyperbole.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sides with his party on the pro-gun side, just as Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., supports legislation to raise the age for buying semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21, ban “bump stocks” and large magazines and crack down on illicit sales. That should make for a lively discussion in the Rubio-Demings race for the Senate next November.
“I carried a gun for 27 years as a law enforcement officer. I’m a gun owner today,” Demings said. “Getting guns out of the hands of dangerous people will protect our children.”
As far back as his first Senate race in 2010, Rubio’s campaign material has proclaimed, “I believe the right to bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. The right of citizens to defend themselves by bearing arms is a fundamental human right that should be protected.”
What pro-gun activists call “constitutional carry” should be a source of much discussion as DeSantis runs for a second term. He has said he hopes to sign legislation allowing the legal carrying of firearms — without a state license — before he leaves office. Incoming House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, recently said the House will pass such a bill, although its chances in the Florida Senate are unclear.
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State law now requires concealed-weapon permits, which require a training class. The open display of weapons is widely forbidden.
Nowhere is the partisan divide more evident than in the race for governor. Crist, who boasted a high rating by the National Rifle Association when he was governor (and a Republican), now calls for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” in his Democratic run for governor.
“From the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Floridians have had enough,” says Crist’s campaign website.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, his opponent in the Democratic primary for governor, wants to “change the culture or America when it comes to guns,” much like the country changed popular attitudes toward smoking.
Republicans, of course, are having none of it.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose district is out in the conservative Panhandle, denounced “red flag” laws to confiscate guns from people found by courts to be dangerous. Anyone who support such a law is “a traitor to the Constitution,” in his view.
DeSantis, a former congressman, similarly scorned the compromise bill passed by the U.S. House last week and headed for likely rejection in the Senate. At a news conference, the governor warned that “leftists” are gunning for the Second Amendment.
And they’re aiming at the wrong target, DeSantis said.
“You focus on the criminal. You focus on the lunatic,” said DeSantis. “You don’t kneecap the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
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Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com
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