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PEOPLE of Florida, it’s up to you. You have the power to help restrict killing machines known as military-style assault weapons, the kind used to destroy so many precious lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
All you have to do is sign your name. Do it. Do it now. Get three friends to do it, too.
Volunteers pushing the proposed constitutional amendment to ban assault weapons announced this week that they have obtained 103,000 signed petitions, enough to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of their proposed ballot language, an important legal step. But a total of 766,200 verified voter signatures are needed for the initiative to reach the November 2020 ballot. That’s a tough number to reach. History shows you have to hire people to gather the required signatures from every corner of the state, an effort that usually costs millions of dollars.
Your help is needed because Gov Ron DeSantis and the special interests who control Tallahassee just made it a lot harder for citizens to take matters into their own hands when the legislature refuses to listen.
A new state law makes it illegal for citizen initiatives to pay petition-gatherers by the signature, which will further drive up costs. It also requires petition-gatherers to register with the secretary of state, placing another hurdle before those who want to help. And it imposes fines of $50 for every form not submitted within 30 days and $1,000 for forms not returned, creating a chilling effect on those who might want to volunteer.
This cynical attack on democracy came on the last full day of the 2019 session. As usual, the majority Republicans steamrolled Democratic opposition. And the governor, who pushed the bill behind the scenes, signed it into law late last Friday.
The NRA is thrilled. “These changes are critically important to gun owners, as anti-gunners repeatedly try to subvert the Constitution and Second Amendment rights by imposing gun bans and gun control through the ballot petition process,” NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said in an email blast.
Defending his support, DeSantis said: “This is not supposed to be driven by out-of-state special interests. It’s supposed to be driven by Floridians, but that’s really not what’s happened.” DeSantis is wrong. Consider the 12 constitutional amendments that made last November’s ballot. Three came from the legislature. Seven came from the Constitution Revision Commission, which is appointed by the governor, legislative leaders and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. One amendment was bankrolled by Disney and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. And one — Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to certain felons — was bankrolled by the ACLU and a social-welfare nonprofit called Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Supporters of a Florida assault weapons ban include some of the families of Parkland and Pulse victims; a leading Republican donor, Al Hoffman, who lives in North Palm Beach; and groups on the front lines of the gun-safety debate, such as March for Our Lives, Florida PTA and League of Women Voters of Florida.
Do those sound like shadowy out-of-state interests to you? The group just released a new digital ad, ‘Weapons of War’, which features people whose lives have forever been changed by assault weapons.
“The last time I saw my son he was in a coffin,” says Maria Wright, whose son Jerry was killed at Pulse. “And when I put my hand on his chest, there was no chest there. They had to put Styrofoam to hold his shirt up. Because that’s the kind of damage these weapons do.” A state ban on military-style assault weapons won’t end gun violence. But it’s a start.
All you have to do is sign your name. Do it. Do it now. Get three friends to do it, too.
Volunteers pushing the proposed constitutional amendment to ban assault weapons announced this week that they have obtained 103,000 signed petitions, enough to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of their proposed ballot language, an important legal step. But a total of 766,200 verified voter signatures are needed for the initiative to reach the November 2020 ballot. That’s a tough number to reach. History shows you have to hire people to gather the required signatures from every corner of the state, an effort that usually costs millions of dollars.
Your help is needed because Gov Ron DeSantis and the special interests who control Tallahassee just made it a lot harder for citizens to take matters into their own hands when the legislature refuses to listen.
A new state law makes it illegal for citizen initiatives to pay petition-gatherers by the signature, which will further drive up costs. It also requires petition-gatherers to register with the secretary of state, placing another hurdle before those who want to help. And it imposes fines of $50 for every form not submitted within 30 days and $1,000 for forms not returned, creating a chilling effect on those who might want to volunteer.
This cynical attack on democracy came on the last full day of the 2019 session. As usual, the majority Republicans steamrolled Democratic opposition. And the governor, who pushed the bill behind the scenes, signed it into law late last Friday.
The NRA is thrilled. “These changes are critically important to gun owners, as anti-gunners repeatedly try to subvert the Constitution and Second Amendment rights by imposing gun bans and gun control through the ballot petition process,” NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said in an email blast.
Defending his support, DeSantis said: “This is not supposed to be driven by out-of-state special interests. It’s supposed to be driven by Floridians, but that’s really not what’s happened.” DeSantis is wrong. Consider the 12 constitutional amendments that made last November’s ballot. Three came from the legislature. Seven came from the Constitution Revision Commission, which is appointed by the governor, legislative leaders and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. One amendment was bankrolled by Disney and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. And one — Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to certain felons — was bankrolled by the ACLU and a social-welfare nonprofit called Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Supporters of a Florida assault weapons ban include some of the families of Parkland and Pulse victims; a leading Republican donor, Al Hoffman, who lives in North Palm Beach; and groups on the front lines of the gun-safety debate, such as March for Our Lives, Florida PTA and League of Women Voters of Florida.
Do those sound like shadowy out-of-state interests to you? The group just released a new digital ad, ‘Weapons of War’, which features people whose lives have forever been changed by assault weapons.
“The last time I saw my son he was in a coffin,” says Maria Wright, whose son Jerry was killed at Pulse. “And when I put my hand on his chest, there was no chest there. They had to put Styrofoam to hold his shirt up. Because that’s the kind of damage these weapons do.” A state ban on military-style assault weapons won’t end gun violence. But it’s a start.
