Parkland kids help politicians find courage to defy NRA

We’ve been offered a new definition of courage: To no longer grovel before the NRA like lickspittle sycophants.

Nuevo heroism was on display Monday night in Miramar, as four Florida politicians uttered phrases that in the past would have made their political consultants blanch. Support gun control. Ban assault weapons. Expand background checks. Prohibit high capacity rifle magazines. Stop lunatics from purchasing firearms. Fire Adam Putnam.

OK. Maybe that last item didn’t require much grit. Not for Democratic gubernatorial candidates who assume Putnam will win the Republican nomination.

But it reveals something about the change in Florida’s political atmosphere that Putnam’s dog-like fidelity to the NRA, once high on the list of required attributes for a statewide candidate, suddenly looks like a political liability.

A mundane post from the agriculture commissioner’s 2017 twitter feed has been retrieved in 2018 to brand him as an NRA flunkie. “The liberal media recently called me a sellout to the NRA. I’m a proud #NRASellout!”

“Proud NRA sellout” seemed so nifty when he kicked off his gubernatorial candidacy a year ago. But lately, it sounds like a catchphrase in an attack ad. “Proud NRA sellout” also complicates Putnam’s attempt to explain why his agency failed — for more than year — to conduct the requisite criminal background checks before issuing concealed weapons permits. “In the private sector if you’ve done something as incompetent as Adam Putnam has done, you’d be fired. What he did is a travesty,” said former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine. None of the other Democrats contested the assertion.

Poor Adam. The NRA’s favorite flunky failed to anticipate a change in the political winds. And why would he? After all, Florida’s leading politicians didn’t offer much more than empty platitudes — lots of thoughts and prayers — after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando two years ago left 49 dead. Or after a mad gunman killed five and wounded six at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on January 6, 2017.

Nor did the nightly shootings in Florida’s inner city neighborhoods — a slow motion massacre — elicit much response from elected leaders, Republican or Democrat. Politicians have probably assumed, for good reason, that Floridians had become inured to gun violence. If they don’t care, why risk offending the very loud and very volatile gun rights crowd?

But something changed after the Valentine’s Day murders in Parkland (17 killed, 17 wounded) at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was as if the young student survivors — articulate, persuasive, fearless and canny with their use of social media — had banished the apathy that heretofore allowed gun lobbyists to run amok in Tallahassee.

The #neveragain kids have turned the NRA’s once coveted “A-plus” political rating into a scarlet letter. They’ve called out politicians who’ve collected large contributions from the gun lobby. They’ve convinced major airlines and rental car companies to end special discount programs for NRA members. Corporations like Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kroger and L.L. Bean instituted new restrictions on firearm and ammunition sales after Parkland. The First National Bank of Omaha announced it would no longer issue the NRA Visa Card

Suddenly, Republican pols are feeling antsy about their support for anything-goes gun measures. Even Gov. Rick Scott, the erstwhile NRA super patsy, has decided he’d rather cross the gun lobby than take on Parkland’s #neveragain kids. In March, he signed legislation that raised the age threshold for buying firearms, imposed a three-day waiting periods on most gun purchases, banned bump stocks and included other provisions that caused the heads of gun rights absolutists to burst into flames.

Either Scott has undergone a spiritual epiphany or else the apparatchiks running in his U.S. Senate campaign have warned him that the voting public — sick of the firearm carnage — will no longer abide his gunslinger act. (Besides, he never looked convincing in camo.)

Of course, Democrats have been terrified of the NRA since Bill Clinton signed a law (since repealed) banning assault weapons back in 1994. Clinton blamed the gun rights issue for the backlash that caused his party to lose 54 seats in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. Ever since, Democratic politicians, with the exception of those safely ensconced in liberal urban enclaves, have addressed gun control proposals with evasive stares and indiscernible mumbles.

Until now. Thanks to the #neveragain kids and the unspeakable horrors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Florida politics seem to have undergone a profound shift. But if never-againers stay home and play video games election day, all this brave talk about cracking down on assault weapons or limiting gun magazines will have been all for naught. The oh-so-proud NRA sellouts will win again.