GUN SHOW DRAWS OUTRAGE

One week after two mass shootings not the time for Pembroke Pines event, opponents say

PEMBROKE PINES — This is not the time for a gun show, opponents say — not a week after 31 people died in two mass shootings. And maybe not ever.

A show planned this weekend in Pembroke Pines — and a Republican voter drive planned at the same show — are drawing outrage from people who think gun shows are dangerous and insensitive to the communities of El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, where gunmen opened fire at a shopping center and in a nightlife district last weekend.

Residents besieged the Pembroke Pines City Commission on Wednesday after learning that Florida Gun Sales Inc. has moved to their town after being forced out of Fort Lauderdale’s War Memorial Auditorium.

“Very, very few people love the gun show,” said Fort Lauderdale activist Barbara Markley, “And the rest of us hate it.”

The show’s owner and operator, Khaled Akkawi, portrays the show more wholesomely. The gun show is for everyone, he said. It attracts thousands of people from all backgrounds.

Akkawi fails to see “what happened in El Paso and what happened in Dayton had to do with my gun show in Florida.”

The shows will be Saturday and Sunday at the Charles F. Dodge City Center. Akkawi also has shows scheduled there in late September and early January.

This particular show has been planned for a year and a half, Akkawi said. He said he wouldn’t back down from what he considers a small group of voices in the community vs. the thousands who

attend his shows.

City commissioner Angelo Castillo called the timing of the show insensitive. He pointed out that many Pembroke Pines residents are Latino — 43%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — and they are extremely anxious after the massacre in El Paso, where a gunman killed 22 people while supposedly looking for Latino victims.

“People feel like this is an inappropriate place” for the show, Castillo said. The center should be a “place folks could gather to celebrate all things Pembroke Pines,” he said. Renting it out to any organization that would use it to sell goods or services violates the nature of the space, he said.

Exactly how the show wound up in Pembroke Pines is unclear.

Castillo said communication must have failed at some step of the process. He found out about the gun show only after hearing rumors floating around City Hall. Many Pembroke Pines residents found out only when they saw billboards advertising the show, he said.

The show didn’t need approval from the city. The management of the Charles F. Dodge City Center falls under the purview of the Parks Department, but it is actually outsourced to a property management company called SMG, according to Castillo.

According to its website, SMG also manages the Broward County Convention Center, the Miami Convention Center and Ashe Auditorium in downtown Miami.

The city has no power to stop the show because a contract has been signed, Castillo said, but he hopes a solution can be found before the shows in September and January.

Mayor Frank C. Ortis agreed but said “right now state law prohibits us from challenging the gun show.” He said he personally called Akkawi and asked him to delay or cancel the show. According to both men, they were unable to reach a compromise.

Akkawi outlined safeguards in place to safely and legally sell guns. To even start filling out a federal form, potential owners must prove they are at least 21 years old and residents of Florida. After filing out the forms, they agree to submit to a background check through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Then, they must wait five business days until they can pick up their guns at a local gun store.

Akkawi said, however, that he wouldn’t be able to ban dealers from selling specific weapons like the AR-15, a common choice of mass shooters.

Asked whether he believed the show was inappropriate so soon after two mass shootings, Akkawi said that to some people the time will “never be right for a gun show.”

He said he doesn’t mind Markley and other protesters, because “that’s what this country is about. If you don’t like something, you can be against it.”

Likewise, he doesn’t mind if Republicans register voters at the show. He has not heard from the party, he said, but Republicans have held similar drives at his shows in the past.

In fact, Republicans have been registering voters at gun shows and churches for more than a decade, especially in heavily Democratic places like Broward County. They say it makes sense for the party to find voters at places where the pool of people is more likely to skew Republican — the same reason Broward Democrats have registered voters at a monthly flea market at the Pride Center gay and lesbian community center in Wilton Manors.

Florida Democrats are seizing on the Republican plans anyway in hopes of gaining a political advantage after last weekend’s shootings.

“It’s dangerous and frankly unbelievable that after a weekend of back to back mass shootings, that the Trump campaign and @FloridaGOP would think to register voters at gun shows,” the state Democratic Party’s executive director, Juan Peñalosa, wrote on Twitter. “It shows how out of touch they are with the American people,”

Markley said she has heard often that some community members are excited about the gun show.

“I’m sure they are,” she said. “But some of us are terrified.”

She was at the forefront of the crusade to keep the gun show out of Fort Lauderdale. When a different sale emerged in Pompano Beach, she was there with case law and legal arguments against it (Markley is a lawyer but is protesting the Pembroke Pines show as a private citizen.)

Markley likens her crusade against gun shows to a game of whack-a-mole: Once you knock one down, another pops up.

If Pembroke Pines can’t cancel the three remaining gun shows, Markley said, she hopes the city at least will “take a stand and never do this again.”