Anti-gunners are proving just how much they love to not let a good crisis go to waste. While they still have their soapbox made out of the bodies of high school kids, they sought to try and pressure the “Gunshine State” into adopting an assault weapons ban. It wasn’t a stupid move, to be honest. Emotions are high, and pro-gun lawmakers in the state may well have felt pressure to capitulate at this point whereas they might no in a few weeks.
Unfortunately for the gun grabbers, the effort didn’t go as planned.
Less than a week after 17 people were fatally shot at a Florida high school, the state House has voted down a motion to take up a bill that would ban assault rifles, effectively killing the measure for this session.
The motion failed by a 36-71 vote.
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were in the gallery to watch the vote. An Associated Press photo showed Stoneman Douglas junior Sheryl Acquarola, 16, overcome with emotion, alongside several other students.
As the Florida House opened its session Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Kionne McGhee asked for a procedural move that would have allowed it to consider a bill to ban assault rifles and large capacity magazines.
He said the move stemmed from the massacre last week that has refueled a national debate about gun control.
The bill had been assigned to three committees but was not scheduled for a hearing. The committees won’t meet again before the legislative session ends March 9.
McGhee said that means the bill would be dead unless the House voted to remove it from the committees and let it be considered by the full House.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate say they will consider proposals including raising age restrictions for gun purchases and the red-flag bill regarding temporarily taking away someone’s guns if they are deemed a threat to others.
This is a huge loss for the anti-gunners, and it was complete with a sobbing survivor from Parkland being held up to try and make it look like a personal attack on a teenage girl.
As mentioned earlier, McGhee’s efforts were actually smart, from a political tactics standpoint. If he can’t get an anti-gun bill through now, there’s no way in hell he can get one through later when emotions have died down. Unfortunately for him, he failed to understand quite which way the winds were blowing.
While emotion is high and the mainstream media is in full-on anti-gun mode, lawmakers aren’t ready to back down. Pro-gun rights groups and lawmakers understand that if anything killed those kids, other than the knuckle-dragging dipstick who pulled the trigger, it was the defeat of a bill a while back that would have allowed teachers to be armed.
Taking the rights of law-abiding citizens away won’t accomplish much of anything, and those lawmakers in Florida know it. That’s why the ban was voted down and voted down hard. It needed to be. You don’t make good law when emotions are high, and gun control is never good law.
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