For those unfamiliar with Florida geography, Leon County is the home of Tallahassee, the state capital. As a result, they’ve got a pretty urban population with a lot of voters being left-leaning, likely due to Florida State University also being there. That means that while the state is not generally an anti-gun state–quite the contrary, really–one does see more support for gun control there than in many other places throughout the state.
And it seems that the county commission is trying to push an anti-gun agenda onto the rest of the state.
During the Leon County Commission meeting addressing state and federal legislative priorities, Commissioner O’Keefe moved to adopt four gun “common sense” reform policies, with Commissioner Proctor seconding the motion.
The first policy requires universal background checks, which would close loopholes that allow people to purchase guns from unlicensed sellers without a background check. The second is secure gun storage laws, which would require the owner to secure the firearm in a place that unauthorized people cannot access. The implementation of extreme risk protection orders, or red flag laws, would allow a judge to temporarily restrict a person’s access to firearms if they present a high risk of harm. The final policy is to require gun owners to report lost and stolen guns to law enforcement.
Now, this is particularly stupid because Florida already has extreme risk protection orders. They were part of the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, when Florida lawmakers got particularly stupid and passed a bunch of stuff they never should have passed.
Regardless of why and when they passed it, though, that’s already on the books. For Leon County commissioners to want such a law to be implemented now, when it’s already on the books, suggests that none of these people even know what the law is, much less what benefits or downsides might be for any of these measures.
I also have to take exception to the description of what universal background checks do. Sure, saying it “would close loopholes that allow people to purchase guns from unlicensed sellers without a background check” might be technically correct, but it suggests that these “unlicensed sellers” are anything but private citizens who are just trying to sell one of their guns to another private party who wants to buy it. It’s also not a loophole.
And universal background checks don’t do anything to black market dealers, who are the people selling to criminals in the first place. That’s assuming the crook didn’t steal the gun themselves.
Mandatory storage laws are popular with the anti-Second Amendment types, of course, but much of this is spurred by the FSU shooting, where the killer took his mother’s firearm. The problem was that the dipstick in question wouldn’t have been prevented from accessing the gun under most mandatory storage laws.
Plus, I talked about some of the issues with these laws earlier today. The long and the short of it is the fact that it tells people what to do without any regard for their situation.
Finally, we’ve got the mandatory reporting law, which does…what? What does it actually do? At best, you know this person had a gun stolen. It doesn’t help you recover it. It doesn’t stop someone from trading it on the black market. It doesn’t do anything. Plus, unless they have the serial number recorded, it doesn’t even stop someone from selling it to a licensed dealer, for crying out loud.
All it does is allow the police to punish someone whose gun is taken simply because they didn’t call the police. That might sound like a minor thing, but how many people really keep their eyes on their guns that often? Many keep it somewhere out of sight and don’t even look at it most of the time. It could be gone and they don’t know it for weeks or even months. If someone used that gun for a crime, though, they could be charged for simply being unaware.
That’s not right at all.
Luckily, the good news is that while Florida lawmakers are a little squeamish about passing actual pro-gun legislation, they’re highly unlikely to pass actual gun control, especially based on the wish list of Leon County commissioners.
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.
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