State Sen. Linda Stewart
Pulse victim’s mom, state lawmakers demanding action
and Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith demand their fellow lawmakers at least hold hearings on a bill filed by Stewart to ban assault weapons.
Mayra Alvear, whose 25-year-old daughter was killed at Pulse nightclub, on Wednesday urged Florida lawmakers to ban assault weapons, so other families would not have to suffer the “horrific nightmare” she endured.
She listed other mass killings in Newtown, Conn., San Bernardino, Calif., Aurora, Colo. — and the most recent one, in Las Vegas.
“I am outraged that the sale of these kinds of weapons haven’t ceased after all of these attacks,” she said, accusing politicians of prioritizing gun-industry profits over the victims of gun violence. “I am here to speak for them, and I will be darned if I will not be their voices.”
At an Orlando news conference three days after the Las Vegas massacre, state Sen. Linda Stewart and Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith demanded their fellow lawmakers at least hold hearings on a bill (SB 196) filed by Stewart to ban assault weapons, like the rifle used by the gunman who killed Amanda Alvear and 48 others at Pulse last year.
The two Democrats filed similar legislation after the June 2016 attack at Pulse, but it was never heard in either chamber. Smith described that bill’s reception in Tallahassee as “a cricket convention.”
“If I sound angry, it’s because I am angry,” he said. “I am angry that we can’t even have this conversation. Assault weapons have no legitimate civilian purpose. There is none. They are made to be bought off the shelf as weapons of mass destruction.”
Opponents argue banning assault weapons would restrict the rights of law-abiding Americans but do little to prevent would-be killers from getting their hands on guns.
Stewart’s latest bill would ban weapons “capable of fully automatic, semiautomatic or burst fire at the option of the user,” including AK-47s and AR-15s. It also would ban highcapacity magazines.
Stewart said she knows the bill is unlikely to pass a GOPcontrolled Legislature. Her hope is to get a committee hearing this time, she said. She said she has reached out to Republican Sen. Greg Steube, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, which will be first to consider the bill. “The senseless killing of Americans cannot be the norm of our society,” she said.
Steube’s office did not respond to calls seeking comment.
“We cannot continue to stand by and do nothing as our friends, our family [and] our children are continuing to be murdered,” said Angel Santiago
Jr., a survivor of the Pulse attack. “We cannot accept mass shootings as a new norm in our country.”
Smith said the House version of the bill had not yet been assigned to committees, but he expected it would likely not get a hearing.
“The reality here is that we are begging — even if the Republicans feel like they have the votes to kill this legislation — put it up for a vote,” he said. “Tell the voters what your values are.”
The news conference outside the Orange County Courthouse was hosted by the Florida Coalition To Prevent Gun Violence, a group formed by the League of Women Voters of Florida after the Pulse attack to push for an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks, among other measures.
Supporters surrounded the podium with a rainbow-colored “Gays Against Guns” banner and held signs demanding reform: “It’s not a 2nd Amendment issue … It’s a public safety issue!” and “Support the lives we’ll save! Not the bullets that take them!”
Patti Brigham, the league’s first vice president, decried the Legislature’s inaction as the product of a “run-amok gun culture … that puts firearms over human beings.”
“America has become a battlefield,” she said. “It does not have to be this way, but we have legislators and members of Congress who would rather listen to the gun lobby than the voters who put them into office. That is unacceptable.”
Patti Brigham decried the Legislature’s inaction as the product of a “run-amok gun culture … that puts firearms over human beings.”