Ashley Moody, the NRA’s attorney general

It was just another day in the United States of America. Another mass shooting. Another politician taking up for the gun lobby.

Monday brought news of yet another mass shooting committed with an assault weapon. This time three people died, two of them children. Twelve others were injured, including the mother and grandmother of the slain sixyear-old boy.

A few hours later, Florida learned that its new attorney general, Ashley Moody, is shilling for the people who make and purchase such weapons of mass destruction.

Moody opposes a petition initiative to ban new assault weapons in Florida. Late Friday, she referred the issue to the Florida Supreme Court and requested that it bar the proposal from the 2020 ballot.

Moody filed with the court late Friday, before the Sunday massacre at the famed Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. But her office continued to defend her position aggressively when the decent thing to do would have been to withdraw it.

Moody claims the title and ballot summary don’t properly explain what the constitutional amendment would do.

That’s extremely dubious, and she should have left those arguments to the gun lobby, where they appear to have originated.

The National Rifle Association gave Moody an A rating as a candidate last year. Her Democratic opponent did not return the lobby’s questionnaire, which is habitually as loaded as an AR-15.

The NRA invested $1.8 million in Florida’s 2018 campaigns, according to the public interest group Integrity Florida, but the money went through other committees and could not be traced to individual candidates.

Two of the nation’s worst assault-weapons massacres have happened in our state. The 2016 Pulse nightclub slaughter in Orlando left 49 people dead. The 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland took the lives of 17 students and staff, and injured 17 more.

Survivors and relatives of the Parkland tragedy are prominent in the Ban Assault Weapons Now committee, known as BAWN, which is circulating the petitions. Gail Schwartz, the committee chair, is the aunt of Parkland victim Alex Schachter.

“Year after year, elected officials like Ashley Moody have done nothing on this issue, as more and more families like my own are forced to reckon with the loss of our loved ones due to military-grade assault weapons at Parkland, at Pulse, or at the next mass shooting,” Schwartz said.

Despite Parkland, then-Gov. Rick Scott, the Florida Legislature and the Constitution Revision Commission all refused to ban military-style assault weapons. At the commission, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke against even taking it up.

Assault weapons are the guns of choice for mass murderers for the same reasons why they’re issued to soldiers worldwide: rapid firing, large-capacity magazines and high-muzzle velocities that cripple those whom they don’t kill. Many state hunting regulations forbid their use. Humans should be so fortunate.

California bans assault weapons, but the 19-year-old killer, whose motive remains unknown, bought his legally in neighboring Nevada. Police shot him dead within a minute, but that’s all the time it took to sow death and suffering for more than a dozen families.

The attorney general’s office routinely presents initiative petitions to the Supreme Court once sponsors have certified at least 10 percent of the signatures necessary to get on the next general election ballot. The court is required to decide whether the ballot title and summary are sufficiently descriptive, and whether the initiative deals with only a single subject.

What’s not routine is for the attorney general to take sides. Moody’s predecessors did so rarely, but she has now done it twice in her first six months. Earlier, she came out against an initiative to create a competitive market for retail energy customers.

Moody claims the summary language for the BAWN amendment doesn’t disclose that it “would ban the possession of virtually every semi-automatic long gun,” that “virtually every lawful owner” would have to register with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, that the data would be accessible to all police agencies or that the Legislature could increase, but not lower, violations from a third-degree felony.

Her most contrived argument is that gun fanciers would have only 30 days after voters approve the amendment to grandfather new weapons, and the ballot summary doesn’t say so explicitly.

Here’s what that’s about: Constitutional amendments usually take effect 30 days after voters approve them, which in this case would be early December 2020. The amendment provides that anyone owning a prohibited weapon before the effective date may keep it, but must register it.

As of now, that gives anyone who’s desperate to own one of these killing devices until December 2020, not merely 30 days, to avoid the ban.

We think the ballot title and summary, which the law limits to 75 words, fairly inform any intelligent person what is at issue.

This is the summary:

“Prohibits possession of assault weapons, defined as semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition feeding device. Possession of handguns is not prohibited. Exempts military and law enforcement personnel in their official duties. Exempts and requires registration of assault weapons lawfully possessed prior to the provision’s effective date. Creates criminal penalties for violations of this amendment.”

The Supreme Court would be grasping at straws to buy into Moody’s case.

Her action is consistent, though, with the political winds blowing hard in Tallahassee, where legislators are more sympathetic than ever to powerful lobbies that oppose voter-initiated reforms. DeSantis signed a law to make petition-gathering more difficult and expensive in a number of ways, among them a ban against paying solicitors according to the number of valid signatures they turn in.

The gun lobby is heavily financed by gun manufacturers, whose survival depends on selling more and more weapons into a nation already saturated with them. Properly maintained firearms never wear out. Innocent people should not have to pay the ultimate price for corporate greed.

Moody