Scott Powers
After reflecting saying that Florida needs someone who can stop divisive, hateful sentiments and bring people together, Adam Putnam got his chance to try out his skills at Tiger Bay Friday defending gun-owners and then sitting down with a Pulse survivor who disagrees.
Putnam came to the Tiger Bay Club of Central Florida Friday to talk hurricane response as the state’s agriculture commissioner and political policies on topics ranging from education to economic development as the leading Republican candidate for governor in the 2018 election.
Inevitably there were questions from the broad-political crowd about hatred and white supremacy espoused in Gainesville Thursday by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, and about Putnam’s unabashed support for the National Rifle Association after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando killed 49 and wounded 53, including Javier Nava.
Nava was there Friday with state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat who has sponsored tough gun law reform bills including proposed bans on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. Those were used to wound Nava and kill four of his close friends among the 53 murdered at the popular gay nightclub by gay-hating, Isis-espousing madman Omar Mateen on June 12, 2016.
How, Smith challenged Putnam, could he call himself an “NRA sellout” as he did this spring, and not have it come off as insensitive to those in Orlando community devastated by the Pulse massacre?
“That’s an example of what I’m talking about,” Putnam responded.
He then launched an expression of the point of view of people in rural and small-town Florida, including himself, who consider gun ownership to be a part of their way of life, even, as Putnam said he received, getting guns for graduation presents.
They’re not the people to be vilified or targeted with legislation after tragedies like Pulse, he insisted. They need to be talked with, listened to, recognized as honorable parts of society, he argued.
“Let’s not confuse hatred for fellow man with a heritage and culture and a lifestyle that includes a respect for fellow life but also an outdoor recreation that involves firearms that has been central to our country’s identity since its founding,” Putnam said. “I’d be honored to meet with Javier.”
And then it happened. Putnam sat down with Nava and Smith in private conversation. Afterward, neither expected the other’s position to change significantly, but both expressed hope that what they said might make a difference.
“I told him, don’t wait or gun violence to affect your family or yourself. I think and I hope after he heard me he’ll change a little bit in his mind about guns,” said Nava, who was shot in the stomach and underwent two surgeries, and is recovering.
Putnam said the conversation was an example of both sides listening to each other respectfully, which he thinks is still in practice in Florida, however lost in Washington D.C., and said it was his style.
“We listened respectfully to one another and have a better understanding where each of us is coming from,” Putnam said. “He was shot. At Pulse. I can understand that he has very serious concerns.”
Yet Putnam drew the line on listening when it comes to hate speech, like that offered Thursday at the University of Florida by Spencer, whom he said “spouted hate and vitriol, solely to generate an angry response. And violence follows him wherever he goes.”
Afterward, however, Smith charged that Putnam never answered his question, which was about his self-described “sellout” to the NRA, which Smith described as an extremist organization opposed to any and all gun law changes.
“Nobody is vilifying gun owners,” Smith said.
