A Parkland survivor looks to mobilize Dems
Strengthened after the shooting, state’s gun safety efforts erode
At 15 years old, Sari Kaufman began promoting gun safety reform laws. Now, at 21, she’s mobilizing Florida Democrats to focus on a plan to encourage voters to vote blue.
Her political activism emerged after she survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, when 17 staff members and students were murdered. Since then she’s been leading campaigns to turn out young voters and to speak nationwide on gun violence prevention solutions.
Kaufman, who is studying political science at Yale University, brought her dual gun safety advocacy and political activism to Palm Beach County in November.
“We in this room can be the difference,” Kaufman told a breakfast gathering Nov. 12 of the North County Democratic Club in North Palm Beach. “It is easy to shy away from politics, especially today as they feel so heated and exhausting. But we have to remember that it is always worth it because if we don’t talk about politics and voting, the consequences are dire.”
Kaufman’s message comes at a challenging time for gun safety proponents in Florida and across the United States.
This past legislative session, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP supermajority in Tallahassee made it easier for Floridians to carry concealed weapons and without the need for firearms training. U.S. federal courts have weakened rules barring felons from possessing weapons, and the Supreme Court in the socalled Bruen decision this year undermined the criteria lower courts have used to test challenges to Second Amendment restrictions, such as whether a law serves the public interest by bolstering public safety.
So far in 2023, there have been 29 mass shootings in Florida.
And 2024 doesn’t look promising. Among the gun ownership-related bills awaiting next year’s legislative session on Jan. 8, one would weaken state background checks for firearm purchases. That requirement was imposed after the Parkland shooting that Kaufman survived.
Despite mass shootings, gun violence not seen as a top issue
To capture their votes, Kaufman said it’s important to talk about issues like gun violence prevention, which she said is meaningful to Florida voters who remember where they were during the 2018 Parkland mass shooting. But beyond the state, memories have faded, she said.
“Because the shooting was close to all of us. I think most of us in the room remember where we were on February 14, 2018. But sadly, because the shootings continue to happen, people outside of Florida do not remember what happened here,” Kaufman said. “I’ve been told after I introduce myself, ‘Oh Parkland sounds familiar, but I can’t remember why,’ or, ‘There have been too many shootings. Did something happen in Parkland?’”
Then there’s the matter of Florida’s decided lurch into politically red territory. Republicans now have a voter registration edge to Democrats of more than 680,000 in the state, with nearly 3.7 million voters registered without an affiliated party.
She said Florida residents could be won over also by issues like climate change because of hotter temperatures and increased coastal flooding, or abortion restrictions and book bans.
“There are enough voters who are registered independents, where if we convince them to vote blue, we can turn Florida blue,” Kaufman said. “I have seen this firsthand that when you go out and talk to community members about community and state issues, it is much easier to see eye to eye and persuade voters.”
Although Democrats need NPA (no party affiliation) voters to be able to win statewide, the party has struggled to turn out its voters. In 2022’s midterm elections, DeSantis won re-election by nearly 20 points in what was a GOP rout across Florida, including traditionally blue Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. That happened, in part, from low Democratic voter turnout, The Palm Beach Post reported.
How important is Fla. gun reform?
Next year’s elections will put a slate of new topics on Florida voters’ minds, including Florida’s new concealed gun law.
Democrats are bringing up gun safety as a key talking point for their top candidates, including U.S. Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who was a senior adviser at gun advocacy group Giffords.
Gun violence prevention is a nationally talked about issue, yet Kaufman believes gun violence is so common that people have grown “numb” to it.
As of Dec. 5, the United States has had more than 631 mass shootings in 2023 where four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The number of mass shootings has increased annually since Parkland, with the number of shootings topping 600 every year since 2020.
Still, gun violence and crime is considered a lower-ranking issue to Florida voters based on polling.
A poll right before the 2022 elections by the University of South Florida found that gun violence ranked fifth among top issues, with 27% of Florida adults polled considering it a top three issue. Inflation was on top with 52%, economy and jobs with 48% and immigration with 32%.
Reporting by John Kennedy of the USA Today Florida Network was used in this story.
Stephany Matat is a politics reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at smatat@ pbpost.com.
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