Florida Democrat David Jolly is a master at shifting positions. Jolly served in Congress as a Republican, but renounced the party in 2018 and officially became a Democrat in April of last year, shortly before he announced his gubernatorial campaign.
Jolly earned the NRA's endorsement during his 2014 campaign, but shortly after he was elected his district was redrawn and tilted to the left. Jolly did as well, spurning the NRA in favor of the Brady Campaign and embracing new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
When Jolly announced his gubernatorial bid last summer, he once again leaned into his support for gun control, telling the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he was in favor of a ban on so-called assault weapons, licensing, registration, and even requiring Floridians to obtain liability insurance before they could exercise their right to own a gun.
Jolly wants more comprehensive background checks, supporting them for every transfer, including private transfers between family members.
He wants legal requirements for gunowners to carry liability insurance, and wants laws on storage and locks.
Jolly additionally opposes lowering the firearm purchase age from 21 to 18, a measure adopted after the Parkland school shooting in 2018.
Strangely, almost none of those policies are to be found in Jolly's new opinion piece at USA Today. Instead, Jolly has once again donned the mask of a Second Amendment supporter in order to bash Republicans.
Jolly claims that the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota "has exposed something deeply unsettling about today’s Republican politicians: for them, the Second Amendment is not a principle, it's a prop. It's a right for Republicans, but no one else."
Florida’s leading Republican candidates for governor, Byron Donalds and Jay Collins, said nothing when President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly challenged Pretti’s lawful right to possess a firearm. They said nothing when Trump doubled down days later, declaring, “You can’t have guns.”
For politicians who claim to be the strongest defenders of the Second Amendment, they cowered. Politicians who have staked their Republican careers on defending gun rights suddenly equivocated when the victim was someone with different political perspectives on immigration policy. The Second Amendment, according to their logic, only applies to people who think and vote like they do, not to all Americans.
I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe law-abiding Americans should be able to own firearms, even as we work tirelessly to reduce gun violence in our state through comprehensive and universal background checks, through responsible requirements related to training, storage, and licensing, and through red flag laws that have proven incredibly effective.
If Jolly made any comment about Alex Pretti's Second Amendment rights before his column at USA Today, they weren't on his social media accounts or covered in the press. The only thing I've been able to find was this campaign speech he gave, where he accused Donalds of caring about Kyle Rittenhouse's Second Amendment rights but not Alex Pretti's.
In this moment, we must choose the right side of history. May Alex Pretti's memory be not just a blessing, but a charge.
— David Jolly (@davidjollyfl) January 26, 2026
My comments on Minnesota: pic.twitter.com/NH2tNLM3KA
When David Jolly says he "believes" in the Second Amendment, what does that mean? Apparently it means the "right" to possess some firearms, but not the most commonly sold rifles in the country. It may encompass the ability to carry a handgun in public, but not unless you first jump through government-mandated hoops and obtain a permission slip from the State. If you have the right to keep a gun in your home, Jolly believes the state as the authority to demand you keep it locked up at all times unless its being carried on your person. Oh, and if you're an adult younger than 21, Jolly doesn't believe you have a right to keep and bear arms at all, no matter how law-abiding you might be.
Do I wish that Byron Donalds and Jay Collins had spoken up and pushed back against the asinine comments from Trump administration officials and the president himself? Of course. But the only reason why Jolly even mentioned Alex Pretti's Second Amendment rights was to try to score political points, and it's not like he ever actually bothered to defend those rights or even articulate what his supposed support for the Second Amendment actually means.
David Jolly is no friend to Second Amendment advocates, or even gun owners who can't be bothered to get politically engaged to defend their rights. He may claim to believe that the Second Amendment applies to all of us, no matter what party we belong to, but his policies tell a different story: there is no right to keep and bear arms, just the privilege to do so as dictated by politicians like him.
