Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Assault weapons ban organizers top 100K signatures; seek court review
Florida Politics ^ | 6/10/19 | Scott Powers

Posted on 06/11/2019 9:19:29 PM PDT by Impala64ssa

Organizers of a drive to have a proposed assault weapon ban constitutional amendment on Florida’s 2020 ballot said they have topped 100,000 signatures and expect to get a review of ballot language by the Florida Supreme Court any day.

Ban Assault Weapons NOW and the League of Women Voters of Florida joined with Democratic state Reps. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Anna Eskamani and U.S. Rep. Darren Soto Monday to announce they’ve reached the point where they expect the review.

They also vowed that final approval Friday of HB 5, which restricts citizen initiatives to get measures on the statewide ballot, will not slow them down.

They met at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office Monday to turn in another 728 petitions. The news conference was held minutes after one concluded a few blocks away at Pulse, where organizers are preparing to mark the third year, Wednesday, of the massacre there that left 49 dead and 53 wounded. The Ban Assault Weapons NOW conference included family members of people killed at Pulse on June 12, 2016, and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2017, in Parkland, a massacre that took 17 lives.

Both gunmen used semi-automatic rifles that once were banned under federal law as assault weapons.

“Ban Assault Weapons NOW, a bipartisan initiative, has submitted over 103,000 signed petitions from Floridians all across the state who agree that enough is enough,” said Gail Schwartz, aunt of Parkland victim and chair of Ban Assault Weapons NOW. “We will soon be headed to Florida’s Supreme Court with our amendment that will, for the first time, give voters a say in the types of weapons we want [to be] sold in our state.”

The proposed amendment would ban “semi-automatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once.”

“This is a huge milestone,” Schwartz said.

Orange County Republican Chair Charles Hart blasted the proposed amendment and the effort behind it for seeking to take away fundamental constitutional rights from law-abiding people. Hart charged that Democrats are behind the movement and are taking advantage of suffering people and “a change in the political wind.”

He predicted the drive could backfire and bring people to the polls to vote support gun rights and to vote Republican while they’re in the booth.

Acknowledging that many of the people behind the drive lost family members at Pulse or Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Hart added:

“People are suffering. They’re upset. They have a right to be upset. But I don’t think they have a right to take away a fundamental right that every law-abiding citizen has. Their suffering is immense and my heart goes out to them. But at the same token, this is a right everyone should have.”

Ballot amendments must gather 76,620 petitions to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review and need 766,200 in all in order to make the ballot.

After reaching 76,620 verified petition signatures, the proposed ballot language goes before the Court for a review to determine if it meets Florida requirements for a ballot petition.

With 103,000 signatures in hand, Schwartz said she is confident that at least 76,620 will be verified.

Should the question reach the 2020 ballot, it likely will lead to one of the fiercest and costliest pro- and con- campaigns ever, as evidenced by the harsh political divide. Patricia Brigham, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, pointed out that public opinion polls have consistently found high majorities of Florida voters in favor of some sort of ban of assault weapons, especially since the Pulse and Parkland tragedies.

If it makes the 2020 ballot, it would need to earn approval from 60 percent of voters to pass.

Soto, Smith, Eskamani, and family members of victims and a Pulse survivor spoke of the need for a ballot initiative in Florida because the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has not allowed committee hearings on bills to ban assault weapons sales.

“This is ingenious, Gail, because this is exactly what we need,” said Christine Leinonen, mother of Pulse victim Drew Leinonen. “We will be the first state in the country to ban assault weapons through this means.”

Smith noted he has introduced legislation to ban assault weapons in three consecutive Legislative Sessions since Pulse, and none was given any committee hearings or support by the Republican leadership.

“That is why we are here today,” he said Monday. “We are prepared to collect the number of petitions necessary to get this on the ballot so that voters can decide the issue once and for all.”

Eskamani noted that her House District 47, covering northern and central Orange County, is home to Pulse “where three years ago this week we lost 49 mostly queer black and brown people to the hands of one assault weapon. My motivation to run for office was to honor those no longer with us through action.”

To coincide with the petition-gathering milestone, Ban Assault Weapons NOW also released a two-and-a-half minute YouTube video featuring testimonials of people giving firsthand accounts of shootings with assault weapons.


TOPICS: Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: ban; banglist; fl; florida
Smarmy video at link. And the victim exploitation by the opportunistic ghouls continues. And for what? Still p*ssed that Trump won? To advance some socialist agenda that's been a proven failure over whenever it's tried? The Pulse shooting was perpetrated by a psycho who was brainwashed by islamic teachings that dictated to him to take out as many homosexuals as possible to get in good with allah. The Parkland shootings were perpetrated by a psycho whom the Coward Cty Sheriff's office and school administration knew damn well was trouble, this POS all but hired a pilot to fly over the beaches pulling a banner advertising his intentions to shoot up the school, yet nobody even suggested an intervention, let alone Baker Act the POS.
1 posted on 06/11/2019 9:19:29 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa
So, the 2nd amendment is to be infringed upon by the state? Taking away constitutional protections?

How about a 1st amendment restriction saying people cannot speak in Spanish? Seems fair is fair.

2 posted on 06/11/2019 9:21:50 PM PDT by Reno89519 (No Amnesty! No Catch-and-Release! Just Say No to All Illegal Aliens! Arrest & Deport!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

How many signatures are actually legitimate?


3 posted on 06/11/2019 9:22:01 PM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Assault rifles have hands?


4 posted on 06/11/2019 9:28:34 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Treat this like prop 8 - if it gets that far - just refuse to enact the amendment because it’s a violation of human rights (and it is) and tell everyone they have no standing to defend any lawsuits stopping it.


5 posted on 06/11/2019 9:31:25 PM PDT by Skywise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Can we ban Islam with enough signatures?


6 posted on 06/11/2019 9:33:55 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here Of Citizen Parents_Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Lurkinanloomin

I don’t see why not - they’ve banned Christianity


7 posted on 06/11/2019 9:43:23 PM PDT by Skywise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Once enacted, let them enforce it.
Time for some Florida county
commissioners to declare 2nd
amendment sanctuarys.
There’s no gun registration, so
how are the authorities going to
know who’s got what? While it’s
benificial to be able to go out
for some range time, I’m hanging
on to mine. There just may come
a time when they’ll be used for
their intended purpose.


8 posted on 06/11/2019 9:51:47 PM PDT by Lean-Right (Eat More Moose)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Gun bans via ballot initiatives set a dangerous precedent. Get an assault weapons ban on the ballot and it’ll pass. Every minivan-driving soccer mom will vote for it.


9 posted on 06/11/2019 9:53:24 PM PDT by Drew68
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

Ban cars and trucks. They kill more people each year than guns do.


10 posted on 06/11/2019 9:56:43 PM PDT by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism)http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa

bookmark


11 posted on 06/11/2019 10:25:43 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa; All

Someone should tell these morons that no one except Special Forces, the military, SWAT and FBI agencies have “assault” weapons.


12 posted on 06/11/2019 10:57:22 PM PDT by Cobra64 (Common sense isnÂ’t common anymore.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa; All

They don’t seem very proud of the language of the amendment.

I did not find a link to it at their site.

Anyone else see it?

The devil is in the details.


13 posted on 06/11/2019 11:32:27 PM PDT by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: marktwain

Ban all doctors. More people are killed and crippled by doctor mistakes than anything else.


14 posted on 06/12/2019 4:17:16 AM PDT by oldasrocks (Heavily Medicated for your Protection.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Impala64ssa; JulieRNR21; kinganamort; katherineisgreat; floriduh voter; summer; Goldwater Girl; ...
Time once again for us True Americans here in the Sunshine State to tell all these cowardly Yankees and their brainwashed sheep to shove it up their collective arses.

Florida Freeper


15 posted on 06/12/2019 6:13:28 AM PDT by Joe Brower ("Might we not live in a nobler dream than this?" -- John Ruskin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: marktwain

This link provides a PDF of the petition. I assume it has the wording of the proposed amendment.

https://bawnfl.org/banassaultweaponsnowpetition.pdf

I’m downloading it now over my dial-up.


16 posted on 06/12/2019 6:31:07 AM PDT by NelsTandberg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Joe Brower

I am very much aFRaid that the same cowardly Yankees that supported and voted for the medical marijuana constitutional amendment, which was funded by Morgan and Morgan, (”Ambulance Chasers Are Us) “law firm,” will prevail in 2020!

Flori-Duh is not Blue, yet, but there are still 18 months until the election, and I guarandamtee you that Bloomberg, Morgan and Morgan, every other anti-2A “public interest” group and many, many others, are working overtime and spending millions to turn Flor-Duh Blue and trash the 2nd Amendement!

We have our work cut out for us!


17 posted on 06/12/2019 11:24:07 AM PDT by Taxman (We will never be a truly free people so long as we have the income tax and the IRS.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: NelsTandberg

This is also a gun registration amendment!

“d) If a person had lawful possession of an assault weapon prior to the effective date of this subsection, the person’s possession of that assault weapon is not unlawful (1) during the first year after the effective date of this subsection, or (2) after the person has registered with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or a successor agency, within one year of the effective date of this subsection, by providing a sworn or attested statement, that the weapon was lawfully in his or her possession prior to the effective date of this subsection and by identifying the weapon by make, model, and serial number. The agency must provide and the person must retain proof of registration in order for possession to remain lawful under this subsection. Registration records shall be available on a permanent basis to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies for valid law enforcement purposes but shall otherwise be confidential.”

Everyone on this forum KNOWS that gun registration is the step that precedes gun CONFISCATION!

Without fail, EVERY GUN REGISTRATION SCHEME IN EVERY COUNTRY THAT HAS EVER REQUIRED GUN REGISTRATION HAS CONFISCATED THEM!

LET ME ASK YOU, FLORIDIANS - IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HAPPEN HERE?

[Please forgive my “yelling.” I am PISSED! Banning and registration DOES NOT WORK! All it does is disarm good people!

Who among you believe that the bad guys will quit buying weapons and will register them, once bought?]


18 posted on 06/12/2019 2:46:53 PM PDT by Taxman (We will never be a truly free people so long as we have the income tax and the IRS.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson