Staff Reports
Senate President Bill Galvano is calling for his chamber “to review and better understand the various factors involved in mass shootings.”
They will include “white nationalism, which appears to be a factor not only with regard to these recent mass shootings, but also with other acts of violence we have seen across the country in recent years,” he said.
The Bradenton Republican’s announcement came Monday, after two shooting attacks at crowded public places in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
They initially claimed 29 lives in less than 24 hours and left scores of others wounded, the AP reported. By Monday, the death toll had risen to 31.
Galvano tasked GOP state Sen. Tom Lee of Thonotosassa, a former Senate President and now chair of the chamber’s Infrastructure and Security Committee, to lead the effort.
Lee’s review will start in the 2020 Legislative Session’s first committee week, Sept. 16-20.
“Such a review will help us determine what further actions can be taken at the state level that will build on the legislation we passed in 2018 and 2019,” Galvano said, following the shooting deaths of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County, last February.
Galvano’s full memo to members is below:
“I know you share my view that senseless acts of violence like we saw across the country over the weekend must stop, and that begins with condemning the hate that perpetuates these evil attacks.
“As lawmakers, we all recognize no function of government is more important than the safety of the people we serve. Over the last two years, the Senate has worked together, in bipartisan fashion, to lead state efforts to improve public safety including: significant changes to keep firearms out of the hands of those suffering from mental illness; expanding background checks when a firearm is purchased; raising the age for purchasing a firearm; and, banning devices that turn a legal firearm into an illegal weapon.
“Specifically in the area of school safety, we have worked to enhance communication and reporting of threats to student safety, expand resources available for mental health services, improve school hardening requirements, and provide school districts with options to maximize school safety.
“Unfortunately, the evil acts of violence over the weekend are an all too present reminder that we have more work to do.
“With committee meetings resuming just one month from now, our focus should be on steps the Senate can take to review and better understand the various factors involved in mass shootings, in addition to, and also including, school shootings.
“This includes white nationalism, which appears to be a factor not only with regard to these recent mass shootings, but also with other acts of violence we have seen across the country in recent years.
“I will be asking President Lee, as Chair of the Committee on Infrastructure and Security, to lead this effort during the upcoming committee weeks. Such a review will help us determine what further actions can be taken at the state level that will build on the legislation we passed in 2018 and 2019. We will also monitor any potential actions taken by the federal government in the coming months, which could impact our decisions and options at the state level.
“The Florida Senate will work even harder to ensure the safety of those we serve. Thoughts and prayers must continue to yield action.”
The House isn’t expected to engage in a similar review before the January start of the 2020 session. House Speaker Jose Oliva, a Miami Lakes Republican, released a statement in which he said “Racism, including white nationalism, is a vile, disgusting, un-American ideology.”
“We cannot lose sight, however, that those who subscribe to those beliefs are few and their ideas so rejected that their words and actions unify all Americans — left and right, black, white or brown — in abhorrence and condemnation,” Oliva said.
Oliva noted that as a Hispanic American, he’s seen more generosity and inclusiveness than discrimination and hatred.
“What we know is; evil exists, all of us play part in either expanding hatred or loving our neighbor, and despite what we see on the news, America is a great place, filled with kind people, always willing to help a neighbor in need,” Oliva said. “We must ask ourselves more than ‘what to do’ we must figure out, as leaders and as a society, ‘who we are.’ ”
When asked about Galvano’s directive in the Senate, Oliva’s spokesman, Fred Piccolo, said the speaker stood by his statement.
“He believes the solution to hatred, violence, and intolerance largely rests outside of politics,” Piccolo said.
The shootings come after years of debate in Florida about gun-control issues, including whether to ban assault weapons. The Republican-dominated Legislature has rejected proposals by Democrats to ban the semi-automatic weapons.
A political committee Ban Assault Weapons NOW is trying to get a proposed ban on the November 2020 ballot.
“This weekend, we saw yet two more mass shootings in our country take the lives of 31 fellow Americans, with both shooters armed with military-grade assault weapons,” Gail Schwartz, chairwoman of Ban Assault Weapons NOW, said in a prepared statement. “These events highlight the harsh reality: These killings will continue to happen, here in Florida and across the country, until we take action and do what our elected leaders have failed to do. We must ban these weapons of war.”
After a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, the Legislature approved a wide-ranging measure that required schools to have safety officers, bolstered mental-health services and upgraded protections through school “hardening” projects.
The law also raised the minimum age from 18 to 21 and required a three-day waiting period for purchasing rifles and other long guns. The increase in the minimum age to purchase long guns drew a still-pending legal challenge from the National Rifle Association.
In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation (SB 7030) that built on the 2018 bill. Among other things, it expanded the controversial school “guardian” program to allow armed classroom teachers, put $75 million into school mental-health services and strengthened reporting requirements for potentially threatening incidents that happen on school premises.
DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody on Monday pointed to a need to prioritize public safety.
Helen Ferre, a DeSantis spokeswoman, said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement a month ago formed a Law Enforcement Steering Group comprised of sheriffs and police chiefs to aid local law enforcement in protecting Floridians from “senseless acts of targeted mass violence.”
“Florida is the first state in the country to pursue such a comprehensive threat assessment strategy,” she said.
Moody said during a news conference in Jacksonville that everyone should be “horrified, shocked and saddened” by the recent attacks and more needs to be done to detect “those that are mentally deranged, that would seek to do us harm.”
Senate Appropriations Chairman Rob Bradley said on Twitter that “the ideology of white supremacy is evil.”
“It is the antithesis of what our country stands for and it offends God,” said Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican. “It must be confronted aggressively so that it cannot metastasize further.”
Sen. Gary Farmer, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, urged Floridians to back the 2020 ballot proposal to ban assault weapons. Backers of the proposed constitutional amendment still need to submit hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and get a key approval from the Florida Supreme Court before the issue could go to voters.
“Republicans in FL won’t act on our epidemic of gun violence,” Farmer tweeted.
The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to ban “possession of assault weapons, defined as semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition-feeding device.” The measure, which would not prohibit handguns, includes an exemption for military and law-enforcement personnel “in their official duties.”
The proposal would allow people who already own assault weapons at the time the constitutional amendment goes into effect to keep them, if they register the guns with state law enforcement.
Moody is asking the Supreme Court to block the proposal from going on the ballot and reiterated Monday that she thinks the proposal’s wording is “misleading,” contending the proposal would ban possession of “about virtually every self-loading long gun.”
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The News Service of Florida contributed to this post.
5 comments
Seber Newsome III
August 5, 2019 at 2:31 pm
I am a little confused here, maybe someone can help me. I am white, and I support the United States of America, first over other countries. Am I a white nationalist? And I am southern, generations of my family from the south. So, am I a white southern nationalist.. im confused. and. what about black nationalism? Blacks commit the majority of the murders in America. They kill each other at alarming rates in large cities, such as, Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit. So, are they Black Supremacy, I am so confused?????
It sounds like to me, that Mr. Galvano has a touch of White Guilt in his blood.
gary
August 5, 2019 at 5:38 pm
Very well said!
gary
August 5, 2019 at 5:41 pm
Unless we look at the political party make up of the shooters, we are simply avoiding the truth. Democrats make up the largest number of mass shooters. All but one in the last 15 years, has been a Democrat. No amount of social media scrubbing is going to disprove this fact!
Karl Nurse
August 5, 2019 at 5:49 pm
Mass murders like this weekend can only occur with weapons that are semi or fully automatic. We are know these are weapons for war and serve no other good purpose. They should not be available otherwise. Frankly, a semi-automatic buyback could help.
Also, if we don’t close the gun show loophole, raising the age to purchase, prohibiting criminals and the mentally unstable from purchasing guns will not be effective.
gary
August 6, 2019 at 6:36 pm
Yea, right Karl… give you an inch, you will take a mile! I don’t own one of those weapons, but I will buy one prior to a ban, and so will millions of other Americans! American went on a gun & ammo shopping spree for several years under second amendment hating Obama. You will see a second wave if Trump starts to even appear soft on support for the second.
If you were truly sincere. Your dialog would be more centered around who is holding the guns that are doing all the killing. But we all know that will never happen…… Democrats will never want to look in the mirror!
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