LAWMAKERS:

Hundreds have died in mass shootings since Parkland and Pulse. What’s been done?

With back-to-back mass shootings within 13 hours, and at least 31 people killed over the weekend, calls are again mounting for politicians to do something.

After the Parkland and Pulse massacres, citizens and gun control activists presented a long list of changes they say are needed to save lives. They won few victories.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate has not acted on significant guncontrol legislation. Tallahassee has done more, but state lawmakers have not embraced the fartherreaching proposals many Democrats favor, such as banning assault weapons and restricting high-capacity ammunition magazines.

With the latest tragedies, South Florida Democratic U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Shalala are demanding Congress shorten its August vacation and return to Washington to act. Wasserman Schultz blasted Trump on Monday, telling him “blood is on your hands.”

While offering no specific policy proposals, Florida Senate President Bill Galvano on Monday said state senators will review strategies for preventing mass shootings and study white nationalism ahead of the next legislative session that starts in January.

“Thoughts and prayers must yield action,” Galvano, R-Bradenton, tweeted.

The GOP-led state Legislature enacted Florida’s first gun-control legislation in two decades after the Parkland massacre that claimed the lives of 17 students and staff. Those changes included raising the age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21, making it easier for law enforcement to seize guns from dangerous people, imposing a statewide threeday waiting period for longgun sales, boosting mental health and school security funding and banning bump stocks, which enable enable semiautomatic weapons to fire more rapidly.

But Democratic bills to further tighten restrictions on guns have gone nowhere.

“I am not optimistic that the Republican majority is going to suddenly have a change of heart and start moving forward on common sense gun safety laws, but we are going to keep trying because we fail 100 percent of the time we don’t try,” said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando.

Here are the key flashpoints.

Weapons ban

Democrats in the Florida Legislature forced a vote after the Parkland massacre, but it was soundly rejected by the Republican majority. A bill filed last session to ban assault weapons didn’t get a hearing.

A group called Ban Assault Weapons Now is pushing a referendum for the 2020 election that would prohibit the sale of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody is challenging the ballot initiative and arguing that it is misleading to voters. The state Supreme Court will review and decide whether to approve the ballot language.

State Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, re-filed a bill on Monday banning assault weapons in Florida.

Background checks

A bill that would expand background checks to private gun sales passed the U.S. House of Representatives but stalled in the U.S. Senate.

“Red-flag” laws, which are formally known as “extreme risk protection orders,” allow the government to seize firearms of people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Florida enacted its red-flag law after the Parkland massacre.

Red flag laws have bipartisan support, ranging from U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, a who represents Parkland, to Florida U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. (Scott was governor when Florida passed its red-flag law.)

And Trump expressed support on Monday.

But action hasn’t happened at the federal level. One of the stumbling blocks is whether law enforcement should be able to seize weapons first and then get the action ratified by a judge, or whether court action should come before seizure.

Rubio said on Twitter Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee should take up the version he’s sponsoring.

At the state level, Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, filed a bill Friday that would require private gun sales go through a licensed firearms dealer, closing the so-called “gunshow loophole.”

Bump stocks

Bump stocks allow firearms to perform like automatic weapons.

Florida banned bump stocks as part of a law passed in the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas massacre.

But Congress, controlled last year by Republicans, took no action on the federal level. Former U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican who lost his re-election attempt last year, was one of the sponsors.

In December, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a rule that the ban on fully automatic weapons applied to bump stocks. The rule went into effect in March.

Ammunition/ high capacity magazines

State Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, filed a bill to ban “large-capacity magazines” that hold more than 10 rounds. It did not get a hearing in 2019.

Wasserman Schultz is sponsoring legislation at the federal level that would require background checks for ammunition sales. She introduced it in 2018 and 2019.

Expanding access to guns

State lawmakers approved a controversial measure mostly along party lines that allows districts to arm classroom teachers who volunteer to undergo training. They also passed a bill that allows paramedics assigned to SWAT teams to carry guns when responding to mass shootings.

Measures failed that would have allowed people with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on college campuses and in their cars when picking up children from school.

Violence prevention

Federal lawmakers are considering expanding the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center with a greater focus on school violence prevention.

The Secret Service established the center in 1998 to develop evidence-based indicators of various types of targeted violence, including school shootings.

Legislation to give the added mission to the threat assessment center is called the “Eagles Act,” in honor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Eagles.

It’s sponsored and was introduced in July in the House by Deutch, and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from MiamiDade County.

Rubio is sponsoring among sponsors in the Senate, where the measure was introduced in February.