Florida House Sends Bill to Governor With Gun From Massacre

• Steve
• March 8, 2018
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The Florida House passed a bill that would provide additional money for school safety and allow school employees to be armed at school.  The bill now has to be signed by the Governor of the state Rick Scott and he has not stated if he would sign it or not.

The bill has been opposed by the NRA and also some state Democrats.  The NRA seeks to preserve the second amendment and all gun rights, therefore are restrictions and additional background checks are strongly opposed.  Black Democrats in Florida fear armed teachers and faculty make students of color vulnerable in certain situations.

If a there is an active shooter, some fear a black student reaching for a phone could be confused for a shooter and be shot.  Others point to non-active shooter situations where a student is challenging a teacher and the teachers uses the stand your ground laws of the state to shoot a student they see as a threat.

The governor has not stated if he is taking the concerns of the Democrats into consideration.

Florida’s bill to arm some school workers, raise the age to buy a gun and take guns from people who pose a threat now rests in Gov. Rick Scott’s hands.

On Wednesday, the Florida House approved 67-50 a school safety bill crafted in response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Scott wouldn’t say whether he would sign SB 7026.

“When a bill makes it to my desk I’ll do what they don’t seem to be doing in Washington,” Scott said. “I’m going to review the bill line by line.”

Ryan Petty and Andrew Pollack, who both lost their daughters in the shooting, came up to Tallahassee to witness the vote. Petty had to leave to catch a flight home before the vote occurred after eight emotional hours of debate.

“We’re all in favor of this bill passing. There’s so much good in this bill that it needs to pass. And if anyone’s voting against it in there, they have a different agenda than what their community has, which is protecting our kids and making them safe,” said Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, in the shooting. “Whoever’s voting no doesn’t have the interests of the kids and the community as their best interest.”

The bill funds mental health, school safety and school security programs at about $300 million, plus another $67 million for a program that would allow some school employees to carry firearms.

Another $26 million would go toward tearing down and replacing the building where the shooting occurred and building a memorial on the site.

It would also allow law enforcement to take the firearms of people who make violent threats against themselves or others, with a legal process for individuals to get their guns back.

The bill also restricts firearm purchases to those age 21 and older and requires a three-day waiting period and background checks, the same limitations that are currently in place for handguns.

Most of those voting no were Democrats who took issue with a provision of the bill that would allow some school personnel to be armed.

“I want all students to be safe in school,” said state Rep. Cynthia Stafford, D-Miami. “I believe this is dangerous because there is an implicit bias against boys and girls of color.”

With that bias in mind, Stafford and other African-American Democrats feared that a minority student who reaches for a phone during a mass shooting event could be mistaken for the shooter by school staff with firearms.

To black Democrats angry over the Legislature ignoring “the slow drip of children getting killed by guns,” he said it “should be no different than children getting killed all at once. I get it.”

But to those who had trouble voting for the bill, he added, “This isn’t hard. Putting your kid in the ground is hard. This is pushing a button.”

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