Friday, April 7, 2017

What's Up With Florida's 3 Pro-2A Bills?

After what looked to be a really good start, the large group of pro-2A legislation in Florida were mostly derailed by what appears to be one good investment in one Rino from Miami-Dade County.  At the moment, that appears to be a unsubstantiated allegation, but due to her proudly posing with the head of the Demanding Mommies' Florida chapter, Anitere Flores is widely reported as being the beneficiary of some of that sweet, green, Bloomberg money. 

That was a month ago, so what has happened since?  According to Jon Gutmacher, lawyer, blogger and author of the definitive handbook on Florida gun laws, one important and two "decent to have" laws have cleared big hurdles.  The most important one has passed and now goes to the Governor to sign into law.

The biggest is the bill that restores "innocent until proven guilty" for people involved in the personal hell of a self-defense shooting.  According to Gutmacher:
HB 245 [Sponsors: Rep.  Bobby Payne and Jason Fischer] – This bill provides that the State has the burden of proof by “clear and convincing” evidence in any pretrial self defense immunity hearing. ..............  The House substituted and passed the Senate Bill SB 128, and I believe this is renumbered as HJ 579 (?) which uses the “beyond every reasonable doubt” standard.  That was passed by the Senate before, so the bill now goes to the Governor for signature. 
Counselor Gutmacher goes on to call it a "BIG, BIG VICTORY."  It appears to have been the intent of the legislature all along, but as we all know, prosecutors virtually always reinterpret laws in whatever ways they think will get them elected (cough...Angela Corey ... cough) and there are apparently many jurisdictions in Florida where defending yourself puts you in the rare "guilty until proven innocent" condition.  Making prosecutors prove "beyond every reasonable doubt" that the shooter's intent was to murder rather than to prevent their own murder should fix that.

Along similar lines, a couple of years ago, the State passed laws protecting Concealed Weapons License holders from criminal harassment if they should inadvertently expose their firearm in public.  Prosecutors have notoriously attacked perfectly innocent people (no victim, no crime) costing them great amounts of money and time.  Quoting Gutmacher again:
HB 779 [Sponsor: Rep.  Neil Combee]  – This bill eliminates any criminal penalty for open carry, and makes any violation a non-criminal civil infraction payable by a $25.00 fine. It further removes any criminal penalty or the arrest of a CWL holder who temporarily openly carries or displays a firearm. It further allows any member of the Florida cabinet with a CWL to carry anywhere not prohibited by Federal law.  It makes violation of any of the prohibitions in 790.06 by a CWL holder a noncriminal civil infraction with a fine of $25.00. ............. Passed
Yes, it's a runner up bill.  Yes, it sucks compared to the annual open carry effort that the Miami turncoat scuttled, as have other Miami turncoats before her, but it's hopefully better than the situation we have.

Finally, a bill that probably sounds scarier than most to the Demanding Mommies (who am I kidding?  they're afraid of them all), a bill that makes it legal for CWL holders to carry on public school property when the school is not in session and nothing is going on there.  It makes it legal to carry in private schools and church schools, many of whom are friendly to carrying to start. 
HB 849 [Sponsor: Rep.  Neil Combee]  – This bill removes the prohibitions for CWL carry at private schools and church schools.  It also reduces any prohibitions and  penalties for carry at a public school by a CWL to those set forth in section 790.06 (CWL section) of the Florida Statutes, except for unlawful discharge of a firearm on school property.  It further removes the penalty for legal CWL carry on public school grounds when school is neither in session nor are there any school sanctioned events taking place. ................ Passed.
But... Skools!  Childrens!!  We all know that when anti-gun groups count "school shootings" they include a 2AM shootout between two 20-something drug dealers that happens to cross a school parking lot; this law differentiates (public) school property as not a gun free zone when school isn't in session.  Again, it's a "Miss Congeniality" bill, a poor compromise to the real campus carry bills that get talked about every year, but I reiterate, hopefully better than the situation we have.   Disclaimer: if you were ever voted Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest, don't take this as an insult. 
Florida Republicans' annual gun rights improvement ritual.  You and I are Charlie Brown. 


  1. Florida Republicans' annual gun rights improvement ritual. You and I are Charlie Brown. opening paragraph:


    Gun-owning voters are codependent on gun-banning legislators.

    1. Gun-owning voters are codependent on gun-banning legislators. Not by that definition, we're not.

      We're dependent on them to do what they say they're going to do, and pass laws to represent our interests, not for approval or sense of identity. We contribute to their campaigns and/or vote for them because they promise to respect our rights. When they break that promise, it doesn't change our sense of identity, and I couldn't give a rat's ass about their approval. It's strictly about whether or not they do their job.

      The concept of co-dependency is psychobabble bullshit.

    2. Proof by contradiction: Suppose the opposite, that voters were NOT codependent. What would that situation look like? That situation would look like gun registration in Connecticut in 2014. 90% who wanted to carry would be carrying guns everywhere, schools, nightclubs, courthouses, no matter what politicians said. Government employees would not dare to touch them.

      Gun control in America is the most successful government policy ever, it's even more successful than the Federal Reserve. In the last 100 years man's travel speed improved horseback to moon rockets, but man's personal defense weapon improved from a revolver to a revolver that doesn't go off when dropped. You can't point to any other tool whose performance gains have been so thoroughly halted.

      Charlie Brown is as guilty of being a willing victim as Lucy is of being a persecutor. Charlie simply taking the ball away from Lucy is unthinkable. Voters from the most rule-following religion in the most rule-following country voluntarily got on boxcars to death camps, because the alternative, disobeying their lawfully elected leaders, was an identity-crushing fate worse than concentration camps. The mind control mechanism is installed in the brains of children by government employees in mandatory elementary schools. Freedom is made unfashionable, scary, abhorrent, unthinkable. It works.

    3. Poppycock. The reason that gun owners are so obedient has nothing to do with codependency. The government passes gun control laws, and then puts penalties in place that allow them to ruin you if you break the law: the ATF surrounds your home for six months, kills your wife, takes your home, and throws you in jail. Resist, and they burn down your home with everyone in it.
      So the only people who illegally own guns are the ones with little to lose. Thus, the ghettos and inner cities become enclaves with illegal firearms.
      As far as technology, this has nothing to do with codependency, either. Firearm technology hasn't advanced much in 100 years, because it is a mature technology. Fasteners are a good example: we had screws and screwdrivers 100 years ago, and they are unchanged. As to your transportation example, we did not go from horses to moon rockets in the past 100 years. 100 years ago, airplanes, rockets, and automobiles had already been invented.
      Your Charlie Brown analogy also fails, because you forget that in the case of gun laws, Lucy has a SWAT team, and they will show up and kill Charlie Brown and his family if he tries to take the ball away.

    4. I would also point out that your "Jews got on the box cars" analogy is also false. There were Jews who resisted. (Look up the Warsaw ghettos) The government razed the ghetto, flooded the sewers, and killed 7400 resisters in the fighting.

    5. If one German Jew, MLK era civil rights protester, tax payer, gun owner, grade inflating school teacher, etc. stops obeying then they are toast. But if 250K gun owners in Connecticut out of a population of 3.6M stop obeying registration, nothing happens. Why haven't 24M gun-owning Americans just started to carry everywhere, not register purchases, use normal size magazines, attach suppressors, everything? I believe it's because ordinary gun owners, seeing themselves as "law abiding", are codependent on the approval of politicians.

      7,400 German resisters died fighting, but millions died after voluntarily getting on the trains, despite a 50:1 numerical advantage over the soldiers on the train loading platforms. Look at the pictures.


      Yes, but there are many more choices now for connecting things, such as molded in place inserts, ultrasonic welding, better glue. Invention of alternatives that improve somehow on the handgun were suppressed by gun control.





  2. I keep saying it: We reset all the Legislator's rating to F and they don't get good grades till good bills hit the Governor's desk. These three bills? D Minus and I am being gracious.

  3. Not surprising...the NY migration to FL has caused a lot of strange behavior lately. We have the same problem in Austin with all the CA fruit flies that moved in and took over. Property taxes doubled, restrictive city ordinances abound here now in what usd yo be a laid-back town.