‘Ban Them’ rally at City Hall brings loud voices calling for gun control legislation

It may have been a small group rallying outside City Hall Thursday to ban assault weapons, an event hosted by new local activist group Ban Them.

But they were not silent. And they’re not going away.

Rather, their voices filled the plaza, chanting “Ban Them!” to passing traffic. Theirs was a bold statement: they won’t stand for any more stalling on sensible gun control legislation in the wake of the Pulse massacre last month.

Group leader Carlos Navarro explained that Ban Them began in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting, with a goal to take their agenda to Tallahassee.

Enough is enough, Navarro said — they’re done staying silent. But they’re not an anti-gun group, he stressed.

“We fully believe in the Second Amendment,” Navarro argued. “But we don’t believe these assault weapons have a place in society. We want to be an alternative to the NRA. We believe in gun rights, but we believe the NRA has hijacked those rights.”

Navarro added assault weapons like the one used in the Pulse massacre have no purpose except in the hands of police and the military.

After a month of vigils and mourning, Commissioner Patty Sheehan told the group she’d moved firmly into the “anger” stage in her reaction to the Pulse massacre.

In an impassioned speech, Sheehan attacked lawmakers who had voted down the recent proposal by Sen. Darren Soto to ban those on terror watch lists from buying assault weapons — most notably Marco Rubio and John Mica. She branded the NRA the “National Murder Association.”

“After the Pulse shooting, we could not even get ‘No Fly, No Buy’ passed in the Senate,” she said. “What good is it to be in elected office if you are too much of a coward to protect your constituents? Rubio — you are a coward. Mica — you are a coward. What good is your job if you won’t use your power to protect children or young people? What good is your life if you use your breath to defend murder?”

Soto appeared at the rally himself, saying that although they were unable to pass a “No Fly, No Buy” law, they would continue to try and persevere nevertheless.

Another speaker, Kyle Johnson, compared the newly formed Ban Them movement to those of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

“You may have come here and thought to yourself ‘I thought there’d be more,’” he said. “Because of what you feel inside. But every movement, like Dr. King, like Gandhi, started with a small group. The light that you have got you out of your cover zone. If we focus it, it’ll burn like a laser. It doesn’t end here.

“This is the true first step.”

Rev. Dr. Russell Meyer recited a prayer in which he implored the public to maintain a nation of peace and prosperity over “a set of artificial rights which no other people recognize.”

“Since the Sandy Hook shooting, there have been 126,000 people who died from guns,” he said. “That’s almost 31,000 a year. We have enough guns to give one to every living person in this country. We are one of the only countries in the world where you can buy a high-powered assault weapon, and any day when your brain flips a switch you can go out and use it.”

Sheehan’s voice dripped with disgust as she addressed what she called the “spineless” attitude of many lawmakers in the aftermath of the tragedy.

“I could not stomach the endless parade of spineless cowards who came to my city to say ‘this is not the time to talk about guns,’” she said. “And they stood in the victims’ blood while they said it. They would prefer that we simply hold moments of silence for the victims. They want us to shut up. The NRA is laughing at us while we sit in silence. I will be silent no more.”