Massacres offer brutal clarity in gun debate

Our new attorney general intends to prevent Floridians from voting on a proposed constitutional amendment banning the sale of assault weapons. True to her NRA A-rating, Ashley Moody told the state Supreme Court that the ballot language was not “clear and unambiguous.”

As if muddle-minded Floridians couldn’t discern the type of military-style weaponry that had enabled two disaffected losers to kill 66 innocents and maim another 70 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Pulse nightclub.

On July 26, Attorney General Moody complained to the Florida Supreme Court that the ballot initiative suffered from “clearly and conclusively defective” wording.

Moody needn’t worry. Since posting her letter, mass murderers in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, cleared up any confusion we might have suffered about assault weapons. The three social outcasts with semi-automatic militarystyle rifles added 34 more names to America’s mass shooting death toll, ranging in ages from 6 to 86. They sent another 65 to the hospital, some with such grievous wounds that they’ll never fully recover.

These fearsome weapons allowed the shooters in Gilroy and Dayton to complete their respective killing sprees in less than a minute. All three carried exactly the kind of high velocity firearms that, according to recent polls, 70 percent of American voter want to ban. A substantial majority of Floridians, too, would like to rid the state of these mass murder tools.

Except their attorney general has allegiance to a higher power — the NRA.

Ban Assault Weapons NOW, under the leadership of Gail Schwartz, whose nephew Alex Schachter was among the 17 murdered in the Parkland massacre last year, has gathered about 100,000 signatures supporting a ballot initiative that would allow voters to decide whether to ban future sales of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of firing more than ten bullets in succession without reloading — enough signatures to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of the amendment language.

If the court approves the measure, BAWN must gather another 666,000 signatures to include the amendment question on the 2020 ballot. But not if Moody can help it.

Less than a week after she fired off her letter to the supreme court, Moody was back at it, championing yet another NRA cause. This time, she promised to appeal a ruling by a Leon County judge who had stuck down the draconian penalties that legislators had tacked onto a law prohibiting local governments from enacting their own firearm regulations. Like those ordinances — so terribly inconvenient to gunslingers — that keep guns out of city parks and kiddie playgrounds.

The original law has been around since 1987, but in 2011, legislators decided that mayors and city or county commissioners who flouted the NRA-instigated measure should be personally fined up to $5,000 and removed from office. They would also be prohibited from using public money to pay their legal fees. Meanwhile, the offending government entities would be liable for up to $100,000 in damages.

The legislation was challenged by 30 cities and counties, most of them in South Florida (including Broward County and the city commissions of Fort Lauderdale, Weston, Miramar, Pompano Beach, Lauderhill and Boca Raton), where local politicians don’t kowtow to the gun lobby.

On July 26, same day that Attorney General Moody posted her letter attacking the assault weapons initiative, Leon County Judge Charles Dodson decided that the penalties facing city and county leaders, whose only sin was looking after the safety of their constituents, violated the state constitution. Of course, Florida’s chief gun moll thinks otherwise.

But Moody’s strategy may be outdated. (Remember the ignominious primary defeat last year of the Republican’s onetime leading gubernatorial candidate, the selfproclaimed “proud NRA sellout” Adam Putnam?) A few years ago, sucking up to the NRA and Florida Carry made for splendid politics. But the assault weapon massacres America suffered in Texas and California and Ohio remind Floridians about the overwhelming grief caused by similar mass killings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland.

Perhaps, the attorney general hasn’t quite grasped the public’s disgust with disingenuous political leaders who pretend these tragedies have nothing to do with the unfettered availability of AR-15s, AK-47s and their various knockoffs. They’d rather blame video games.

But Floridians are sick of the body count. That’ll be plenty obvious, if Moody and the Florida Supreme Court allow the voters to have their say.

Fred Grimm (@grimm_fred or leogrimm@gmail.com), a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976.