• Florida governor proposes tougher gun laws.
Florida’s governor announced plans Friday to ban guns sales to people younger than 21, put more armed guards in schools and to make it harder for some with mental illness to purchase firearms guns, responding to days of intense lobbying from survivors of last week’s shooting at a high school.
Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, unveiled his school safety proposals as teachers returned for the first time to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School since the shooting there nine days ago that killed 17 people.
The shooting at the Parkland, Fla., school sparked an intense push to restrict access to assault rifles fueled by student activists who swarmed the state capital demanding concrete gun-control measures.
President Donald Trump said repeatedly Friday that he favored arming teachers to protect students, an idea many educators and lawenforcement officials have rejected out of hand.
“I am totally against arming teachers,” Broward schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said. “They have a challenging job as it is.”
Scott, who’s widely expected to run for a U.S. Senate seta this fall, outlined his plan at a Tallahassee news conference. In addition to banning firearm sales to anyone under 21, the governor called for a trained law enforcement officer to be stationed at every school in the state — and one for every 1,000 students at larger schools — by the time the 2018-19 school year begins.
Stoneman Douglas High School, which has more than 3,000 students, had one armed resource officer who never entered the building while a gunman was killing people inside, officials said.
That failure was compounded by confusion about what was being shown to police on school security cameras the day of the shooting and the lack of meaningful response to reports to the FBI and local police that 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz might become violent, had guns and possibly would attack a school.
Florida’s House speaker called it an “abject breakdown at all levels.” Cruz is jailed on 17 counts of murder, and investigators say he has confessed to the shootings.
Among other things, the governor’s $500 million plan would create a “violent threat restraining order” that would let a court prohibit a violent or mentally ill person from purchasing or possessing a firearm or any other weapon under certain circumstances.
The proposal also would strengthen gun purchase and possession restrictions for mentally ill people under the state’s Baker Act, which allows someone to be involuntarily hospitalized for up to 72 hours. Scott is seeking $50 million for mental health initiatives that include expanding mental health services by providing counseling, crisis management and other mental health services for youth and young adults.
“No one with mental issues should have access to a gun. It is common sense. It for their own best interest, much less the best interest of our communities,” Scott said.
The governor’s plan made no mention of arming teachers on school grounds. The state Legislature’s Republican leadership, however, proposed letting teachers carry a gun if they have had law-enforcement training — a provision that House Speaker Richard Corcoran called a “game changer.”
The legislators’ plan also calls for a three-day waiting period for most gun purchases, with exceptions.
Democrats said neither plan goes far enough.
“Unfortunately, both plans omit a third, critically important piece of legislation Democrats have been and continue to push for: a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” said state Senate Democratic Leader Oscar Braynon. He added that recent mass shootings show that “so long as these highpowered weapons of war remain available for purchase, these killings will continue.”
Talia Rumsky, a 16-yearold Stoneman Douglas High student who was at school during the shooting, was among those who traveled to Tallahassee Wednesday to lobby lawmakers about gun control.
She said Scott’s plan to make it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase a gun is a start but doesn’t it goes far enough.
“This is a great first step, and we appreciate it,” the sophomore said. “But it’s not enough, and we’re going to make sure they know it’s not enough and is not solving our problems.”
Trump told reporters Friday that schools need some kind of “offensive” capability to deter and respond to attackers.
“If they’re not gun free, if there are guns inside, held by the right people, by highly trained professionals, you’re going to see this end. It won’t be happening again. Our schools are essentially gun-free zones, and that makes them very dangerous places,” the president said.
After days of funerals for those killed in the attack, Stoneman Douglas teachers began the emotionally fraught process of returning to the school Friday to collect belongings from classrooms that have been off limits since the slayings. Following an orientation Sunday for teachers and students, classes resume Wednesday.
Broward teachers’ union president Anna Fusco met with the teachers as they returned to campus Friday and hailed them as “incredibly brave and strong.”
“I met with one that was grazed with a bullet . .. She has a hole in her arm and a bruise from her shoulder to her elbow that looks like somebody whacked her with a bat, and she’s like, ‘I’m here because we need to get things ready,’” Fusco said.