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      ‘People will die’: why is Ron DeSantis loosening gun laws that most Floridians support?

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      Governor Ron DeSantis went to the Florida capitol earlier this month to sign a bill behind closed doors with a handful of his allies. The bill, one of many hard-right proposals that Florida Republicans hope to pass during this legislative session, has stoked fear and outrage among gun safety advocates: permitless carry.With Republicans’ sweeping control of the state legislature and governorship, the bill – which would allow Floridians to carry guns without a permit or training – easily passed both chambers before being signed into law by DeSantis. The Florida house approved the bill late last month in a vote of 76 to 32, and the senate then passed the proposal in a vote of 27 to 13.The Republicans’ latest push reflects a broader rightward lurch in Florida’s politics since DeSantis took office in 2019, even though Trump carried the battleground state by just three points in 2020. Polls show that a majority of Floridians oppose the policy, and previous surveys have indicated that Florida voters overwhelmingly support other gun safety measures like universal background checks and mandatory waiting periods.Gun safety groups have provided evidence suggesting the permitless carry law will contribute to an increase in violence. They accuse the governor of prioritizing presidential ambitions over his constituents’ safety in a state that has witnessed two of America’s deadliest mass shootings.“It all has to do with talking points and setting him up to run for higher office,” said Congressman Maxwell Frost, a Democrat of Florida. “And as a result, people will die.”No ‘permission slip’ requiredRepublican legislators across the country have embraced permitless carry, or “constitutional carry” to its supporters, in recent years. The policy has won praise from rightwing activists who view any firearm-related regulation as a violation of their second amendment right to bear arms. Florida law previously stipulated that those who wish to carry a concealed gun must complete safety training and undergo a more detailed background check, but Republicans moved to do away with those requirements.“I believe that this comes down to one pretty clear thing that shall not be infringed,” the Republican state senator Jay Collins said at a committee hearing last month. “We don’t need to have the government get in the way of law-abiding citizens’ rights.”Twenty-five states have already enacted laws allowing residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit, and Florida will become the 26th in July, when the policy goes into effect.“A constitutional right should not require a permission slip from the government,” DeSantis said in his State of the State address last month. “It is time we joined 25 other states to enact constitutional carry in the state of Florida.”The proposal had been endorsed by the Florida Sheriffs Association, which represents the 67 elected sheriffs across the state.“Violent career criminals are not applying for a state permit to carry a gun,” Al Nienhuis, the association’s president and sheriff of Hernando county, said at a January press conference. “Removing the permitting process will assist our law-abiding citizens with the protections they need to defend themselves and their families from those criminals who intend to do them harm.”Florida crime statistics appear to challenge that argument. The 2021 Annual Uniform Crime Report showed Florida’s crime rate had reached a 50-year low, a fact that DeSantis himself touted in his state of the state address.Research suggests that removing the permitting requirement to carry concealed guns may instead contribute to a rise in violent crime. One study released in 2019 found that states saw an increase of 13% to 15% in violent crime rates in the years after they loosened regulations on carrying concealed firearms.Those concerns have fueled a divide among Florida’s law enforcement officers. Although the Florida Sheriffs Association supported the bill, a number of officers said they fear the policy will only further endanger them and their colleagues.“It’s not going to make our communities safer,” Sheriff John Mina of Orange county said on The Problem With Jon Stewart. “It’s going to make them more dangerous.”At the March committee hearing on the permitless carry bill, dozens of Florida residents echoed those fears. Isabella Burgos, a volunteer with the gun safety group Students Demand Action and a first-year student at Florida State University, gave emotional testimony about how she regularly fears for her life as she walks around campus. Burgos spoke just weeks after a gunman attacked Michigan State University, killing three students.“I’m at war with the terrors of the chance I may die young,” Burgos said through tears. “This epidemic will turn to utter war with this bill in place. So I urge you all to oppose this deadly bill that would be destructive to our minds and destructive to society – vote no. My life, my children’s lives and your children’s lives depend on it.”A ‘uniquely heinous proposal’In February, Florida marked five years since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, which claimed the lives of 14 students and three educators. The attack came less than two years after a gunman killed 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub, in Orlando.For gun safety advocates, Republicans’ introduction of a permitless carry bill on the heels of the Parkland anniversary feels cruel. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic congresswoman from Florida and now senior adviser to the gun safety group Giffords, described Republicans’ actions as “shameful”.“We are one of the largest states in the country, where we have seen two of the worst mass shootings,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “And we have to continue to do the work to make sure that we protect the lives of Floridians.”As Mucarsel-Powell noted, Florida legislators came together in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill. The legislation, which raised the age requirement for buying a long gun from 18 to 21 and established a “red flag” law allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from those deemed to be dangerous, was signed by the then governor, Rick Scott, a Republican.“Everybody can say that partisanship has increased and the partisan divide is getting bigger, and I think that’s really evident in Florida,” said Cate Allen, a survivor of the Parkland shooting and leader of Students Demand Action. “Our representatives, our congressmen are pursuing political ambitions and personal gain over what their constituents actually want.”Surveys indicate that Florida residents broadly oppose permitless carry. One recent poll conducted by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab showed 77% of Florida voters, including 62% of Republicans, do not support the proposal.“I’m not going to say that the bills that [DeSantis] pushed in the past were good, but I think this one in particular is uniquely heinous,” said Alyssa Ackbar, a Tallahassee-based organizer for the gun safety group March for Our Lives. “The notion of getting rid of the permitting for concealed carry is honestly devastating.”To DeSantis’s critics such as Frost, the governor’s robust support for permitless carry is a particularly alarming example of how his political aspirations have endangered Floridians.“This is just one in a laundry list of legislation that will result in deaths, that will result in harm, that will result in trauma,” Frost said. “But it’s all part of a greater plan here because he’s more interested in running for president than he is in running the state of Florida.”‘Bullying people into submission’Although the permitless carry bill has now passed, gun safety advocates say they are still committed to holding Republican legislators accountable for supporting the widely unpopular bill.“I think it’s important to let lawmakers know that we’re watching them,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun safety group Moms Demand Action. “If they do the right thing, we’ll have their back, and if they do the wrong thing, we’ll have their job.”Advocates put a significant share of the blame for the bill on the shoulders of DeSantis, accusing Republican legislators of allowing their allegiance to the governor to take priority over the wishes of their constituents.“We’re seeing a rise of extremism and radicalism from DeSantis and the legislators that are completely loyal to him,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “They will not do anything that he doesn’t support.”Ackbar said she had heard from legislators that some of their colleagues only expressed support for the permitless carry bill because they want to stay in DeSantis’s good graces.“DeSantis has a way of bullying people into submission, into doing what he wants, and I truly believe that this bill is part of that as well,” Ackbar said.Gun safety advocates fear DeSantis will only escalate his demands to relax Florida’s gun regulations as he prepares to launch a presidential campaign, given that he has previously received criticism from hardline gun rights activists. The governor faced accusations of hypocrisy from gun safety advocates and gun rights activists alike in February, after the Washington Post reported on emails showing that DeSantis’s campaign team quietly sought to ban concealed weapons from his own election night party in Tampa last November.Watts mocked DeSantis’s stance as “guns everywhere for thee but not for me”, adding: “The governor knows that it is dangerous for people to have easy access to guns and then show up at his events. And yet, he wants those same people in our schools and in public places. It is the height of hypocrisy.”Gun rights activists have similarly criticized DeSantis for holding events where firearms are prohibited. A gun rights protester was arrested in October for trespassing at an Alachua county Republican party event where DeSantis was speaking, although those charges were later dropped. The protester held a sign reading: “I will not be disarmed by DeSantis.”Even the permitless carry proposal has sparked frustration among gun rights activists, who say the legislation does not go far enough. Those activists instead want a law similar to the one used in Texas, which allows residents to openly carry a gun in public without a permit instead of limiting the policy to concealed weapons. DeSantis’s failure to enact an open permitless carry law reflects “political impotence”, as one gun rights supporter put it at the committee hearing last month.Given those complaints from rightwing activists, gun safety advocates worry that DeSantis will eventually push for an open permitless carry policy in his quest to woo Republican primary voters. The human toll of such a political strategy, they say, could be devastating.“All of his political moves and all of the bullying that he does to have people vote his way, it costs lives,” Ackbar said. “They’re not just talking points. They’re not just political notions. They are real, and there are young people in communities in this state that are constantly harmed by the ways that he pushes these bills.” More

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      ‘Power to the people’: expelled Democrat returns to Tennessee state legislature – video

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      Nashville’s governing council on Monday afternoon voted unanimously to return expelled Black lawmaker Justin Jones to the Tennessee state legislature. The body’s Republican majority expelled Jones and fellow house member Justin Pearson late last week because they led protests in the chamber demanding stricter gun control after a mass shooting at an elementary school in the city days before. Jones took his oath of office on the Capitol steps before speaking on the house floor More

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      Nashville council votes to reinstate expelled Democrat Justin Jones

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      The city of Nashville’s governing council on Monday afternoon voted unanimously to return expelled Black lawmaker Justin Jones to the Tennessee state legislature.The body’s Republican majority state lawmakers had expelled Jones and fellow house member Justin Pearson late last week because they led protests in the chamber demanding gun control after yet another mass shooting in an American school, this one at an elementary school in the city days before.Moments later, Jones marched to the Capitol several blocks away. He took the oath of office on the steps and entered the building while supporters sang This Little Light of Mine.A loud round of applause erupted as Jones walked into the chamber with Democratic representative Gloria Johnson, who was also targeted for expulsion, but spared by one vote.“To the people of Tennessee, I stand with you,” Jones said in his first statement on the house floor. “We will continue to be your voice here. And no expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but it will only galvanize and strengthen our movement. And we will continue to show up in the people’s house.“Power to the people,” he shouted, to cheers.The other lawmaker, Justin Pearson, could be reappointed Wednesday at a meeting of the Shelby county commission.There was uproar last week and the act was condemned by many as an extraordinary act of political retaliation. Thousands of protesters flocked to the Tennessee state capitol to support the three Democratic members and their expulsion was slammed as racist. Joe Biden had called the move “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” in a statement.And US vice-president Kamala Harris rushed to Nashville on Friday evening and praised the lawmakers, whom she said “chose to show courage in the face of extreme tragedy”.Jones’ appointment is on an interim basis. Special elections for the seats will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special election.Before the special council session was to begin, a couple of hundred people gathered in front of the Nashville courthouse, and more were pouring in. Some held signs reading, “No Justin, No Peace.” Inside the courthouse, a line of people waited outside the council chambers for the doors to open.Rosalyn Daniel arrived early and waited in line to get a seat in the council chambers. She said she is not in Jones’ district but is a Nashville resident and concerned citizen.“I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights movement, so I understand why this is so important,” she said.Republican house speaker Cameron Sexton’s spokesperson, Doug Kufner, indicated that whoever is appointed to the vacancies by the Nashville and Shelby county governments “will be seated as representatives as the constitution requires”.House majority leader William Lamberth and Republican Caucus chairman Jeremy Faison said they will welcome back the expelled lawmakers if they are reinstated.“Tennessee’s constitution provides a pathway back for expulsion,” they said in a statement. “Should any expelled member be reappointed, we will welcome them. Like everyone else, they are expected to follow the rules of the house as well as state law.”“The world is watching Tennessee,” attorneys for Jones and Pearson wrote to Sexton in a letter Monday. “Any partisan retributive action, such as the discriminatory treatment of elected officials, or threats or actions to withhold funding for government programs, would constitute further unconstitutional action that would require redress.”Johnson, the third Democrat targeted for expulsion, also attracted national attention.She had suggested race was likely a factor in why Jones and Pearson were ousted but not her. Johnson told reporters it “might have to do with the color of our skin”.GOP leaders have said the expulsions – a mechanism used only a handful times since the civil war – had nothing to do with race and instead were necessary to avoid setting a precedent that lawmakers’ disruptions of house proceedings through protest would be tolerated. More

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      Florida teacher fired for asking students to pen obituaries for active shooter drill

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      A Florida teacher who was fired from his school after asking his students to write their own obituaries in advance of an on-campus active shooter drill says he has no regrets about the assignment that cost him his job.“It wasn’t to scare them or make them feel like they were going to die, but just to help them understand what’s important in their lives and how they want to move forward with their lives and how they want to pursue things in their journey,” the dismissed psychology teacher, Jeffrey Keene, told NBC News.Keene’s dismissal once again has cast a spotlight on the persistently bizarre decisions within the public education system of Florida, which has banned discussions of gender and sexual identity in classrooms but whose Republican extremist governor, Ron DeSantis, staunchly supports keeping the guns which help fuel school shootings across the country as accessible as possible.According to NBC, Keene learned that his 11th- and 12th-grade students at Dr Phillips high school in the Orlando area would be rehearsing how to respond to a shooting attack at their campus during their first period on 4 April. That prompted him to ask his students to write their own biographical obituaries as classwork, reasoning that the assignment would cause them to reflect on their lives as they prepared to undergo the active shooter drill.“This isn’t a way to upset you or anything like that,” Keene recalled telling his class of 35 students. He added: “If you can’t talk real to them, then what’s happening in this environment?”Just one week earlier, an intruder shot and killed three nine-year-old students as well as three staffers at Covenant elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Police shot and killed the intruder. The attack was one of more than 100 shootings at kindergarten through 12th-grade schools or during school-related activities in the US this year as of Saturday, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database resource.The murders at Covenant also occurred during what as of Saturday was one of more than 140 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four victims are wounded or killed.It later became apparent that someone was upset by Keene’s assignment. By second period that day, Keene said some of his students revealed to him that they had been interviewed by school officials about the obituaries. And in the middle of seventh period, he was told that he’d been fired from his job, which he had started in January.The public school district which oversees Dr Phillips high has largely declined to discuss the case. A spokesperson for the district only told NBC in a statement that an employee responsible for “an inappropriate assignment about school violence” had been fired.Keene said to NBC that he was too new of a hire to qualify for membership to the local teachers’ union, so he had no administrative method available to seek reinstatement to his job. The school district’s statement also noted that Keene was still completing his post-hiring probation, implying that his dismissal could be implemented more swiftly than for a teacher who had finished the trial period.Keene hopes to find another job in teaching and believes his assignment was appropriate, according to NBC.“I don’t think I did anything incorrectly,” Keene told the network. “I honestly didn’t think a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old would be offended or upset by talking about something we’re already talking about.”The steady presence of mass shootings and violence at schools in US news headlines has moved many to call for more meaningful gun control, but Congress has been unable to pass anything substantial, even as schools acknowledge their vulnerability by making students practice what to do if heavily armed intruders barge onto their campuses and try to shoot them to death.A bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden last year expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers and funded some mental health and violence intervention programs. But the president is among many who say much stronger measures are needed, including an assault weapons ban that Congress has been unable to pass.Three days after the Nashville school murders and five days before Keene lost his job, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature voted to allow gun owners to carry around their firearms without a state permit.They did so at the behest of DeSantis, who has also successfully advocated for a legislative ban against classroom discussions of systemic racism, saying the concept joined learning about sexual and gender identity as one of the biggest threats to Florida’s schoolchildren.Florida’s 22 million or so residents make it the country’s third-most populous state. More

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      Protests in Tennessee as Democrats face removal for gun control demonstration

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      Thousands of protesters flocked to the Tennessee state capitol on Thursday to support three Democratic lawmakers facing expulsion for their role in a gun control demonstration after the killings of three children and three adults at a Nashville elementary school last week.Crowds cheered and chanted outside the house chamber, so loud that they drowned out proceedings.Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are the subjects of the expulsion vote. Last week, they approached the front of the chamber floor and chanted back and forth with gun control supporters who packed the gallery.On Thursday the three Democrats held hands as they walked on to the house floor. During the pledge of allegiance, Pearson raised his fist to the crowd.Their possible expulsion has once again thrust Tennessee into the national spotlight, underscoring not only the ability of the Republican supermajority to silence opponents but also its increasing willingness to do so. The move sends a chilling message just as lawmakers grapple with how to respond to the devastating shooting at the Covenant school.On Thursday, many protesters had traveled from Memphis and Knoxville, areas Pearson and Johnson represent, and stood in a line that wrapped around the building. Johnson urged those in the gallery to remain calm and not shout at lawmakers, to avoid getting removed.Protesters outside the chamber held up signs that said “School zones shouldn’t be war zones”; “Muskets didn’t fire 950 rounds per minute”, with a photo of George Washington; and “You can silence a gun … but not the voice of the people”.As the House began proceedings, a Democrat, Vincent Dixie, urged that colleagues “not get distracted”. He mentioned the funeral of Mike Hill, the custodian killed at the Covenant school, which took place earlier in the week.“I want us to keep in mind the sacrifice that he made to keep those kids safe,” Dixie said. “Each of us has power to make change.”Before the expulsion vote, House members were set to debate more than 20 bills, including a school safety proposal requiring public and private schools to submit building safety plans to the state.The bill did not address gun control, sparking criticisms from some Democrats that lawmakers were only addressing a symptom and not the cause of school shootings.Expulsions in the Tennessee general assembly are rare.In 2019, lawmakers faced pressure to expel the former Republican representative David Byrd, after he faced accusations of sexual misconduct dating to when he was a high school basketball coach three decades before.Republicans declined to take action, pointing out that he was re-elected as the allegations surfaced. Byrd retired last year.In 2022, the state senate expelled a Democrat, Katrina Robinson, after she was convicted of using about $3,400 in federal grant money on wedding expenses instead of her nursing school.Before that case, state lawmakers last ousted a house member in 2016, voting 70-2 to remove the Republican Jeremy Durham after an investigation detailed allegations of improper sexual contact with at least 22 women in four years in office.If Johnson, Jones or Pearson are expelled, the county commissions in their districts would get to pick replacements to serve until special elections could be held. The three Democrats would remain eligible to run in those contests. More

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      'Dead kids can't read': Democrat slams Republican on school shootings and book bans – video

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      Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, responded angrily to Marjorie Taylor Greene, after the far-right Georgia Republican advocated that teachers be armed.

      Amid national grief and anger over the Nashville elementary school shooting, in which three children and three adults were killed, members of Congress clashed in Washington and people protested in Tennessee More

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      Republican congressman says ‘we’re not going to fix’ school shootings

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      After the latest massacre of schoolchildren in the United States, the Republican congressman Tim Burchett answered the question Americans have all but given up asking of their elected officials by telling reporters: “We’re not going to fix it.”The three-term congressman from Tennessee, the state where an intruder fatally shot three nine-year-old students and three adults at a small Christian school on Monday, appeared to compare the expectation of safety for American schoolchildren with that of soldiers fighting Japanese suicide attackers during the second world war.“It’s a horrible, horrible situation, and we’re not going to fix it,” Burchett said. “Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”Asked whether there was a role for Congress to play in preventing tragedies that are exceedingly common in the US while being exceedingly rare in the rest of the world, Burchett responded: “I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly … I don’t think you’re going to stop the gun violence. I think you got to change people’s hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I’ve said this many times, I think we really need a revival in this country.”Burchett, 58, has a reputation as “perhaps one of the least filtered members” of Congress, according to a recent profile in Politico that focused on his penchant for somewhat offbeat jokes.His substantive track record is less distinct from his rightwing peers. Burchett was first elected to Congress in 2018, after two decades in the Tennessee state legislature and as mayor of Knox county. He describes himself as an “avid gun owner” and received an A rating from the National Rifle Association’s political action committee, which noted his opposition to bans on semi-automatic weapons. The far-right Heritage Foundation rates his voting record at 95%, thanks in part to his opposition of a bipartisan gun control bill and universal background checks for gun purchases. He was also among 125 House Republicans to sign an amicus brief backing one of the efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election.But Burchett has not always had such a laissez-faire attitude toward crime nor such a cynical attitude toward legislators’ role.In 2006, while serving in the Tennessee state legislature, he sponsored legislation to ban salvia divinorum, an herb with psychoactive properties. “It’s not that popular,” Burchett said of the drug at the time. “But I’m one of those who believes in closing the barn door before the cows get out.“In certain hands, it could be very dangerous, even lethal.”In 2022, after voting against Democratic legislation to fund police departments, Burchett attributed a “violent crime spike” to “liberal soft-on-crime policies and the radical Defund the Police movement”.Burchett has introduced one piece of legislation related to public safety during his tenure in Congress: the 2019 “Unmasking Antifa Act”. The bill sought to create “a new criminal civil rights violation for wearing a disguise while interfering with another person’s exercise of a protected right or privilege”. Had it passed, the bill would have punished people committing crimes while wearing masks with prison sentences of up to 15 years. More

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      Biden says gun violence ‘ripping our communities apart’ after Tennessee shooting

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      The White House led reactions in a shocked America with a call for tightening gun control in the US after a 28-year-old woman opened fire at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, killing six, including three children.“While you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones, but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee – a school shooting – and I am truly without words,” first lady Jill Biden said at an event in Washington as reports of the shooting at the Covenant School began circulating.“Our children deserve better. And we stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer,” she added.President Joe Biden addressed the mass school shooting soon after, and reiterated his calls to Congress to take legislative action.Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking, a family’s worst nightmare”. He said more needs to be done to stop gun violence.“It’s ripping our communities apart,” he said, and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, saying we “need to do more to protect our schools”.“It’s about time we began to make some more progress,” he added.Earlier this month Biden announced a new slate of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence and the proliferation of guns sold to prohibited people. The measures were aimed at stiffening background checks, promoting more secure firearms storage and ensuring law enforcement agencies get more out of a bipartisan gun control law enacted last summer. But his actions did not change government policy, but instead directed federal agencies to ensure compliance with existing laws and procedures.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the Nashville school shooting “devastating”, “heartbreaking”, and “unacceptable”.“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system or to require the safe storage of guns?” she added.“Our children should be able to go to school feeling safe, feeling protected. People should be able to go to the grocery stores feeling safe,” Jean-Pierre said.Nashville police said the shooter – who has not yet been publicly named – killed three kids and three adults before being shot dead by police.“At one point she was a student at that school, but unsure what year,” the Metro Nashville police department chief ,John Drake, said at a press conferences. He declined to give the ages of those who had been killed.“Right now I will refrain from saying the ages, other than to say I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Drake said.According to reports, the woman entered the school through a side door at 10.13am. She began firing on the second floor using two assault-style rifles and a handgun. By 10.27am, she had been shot dead.The private school with 200 students opened in 2011. It is not believed to have armed guards.Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, said he was “closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant” and asked people to “please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community”.Nashville Mayor John Cooper said his “heart goes out to the families of the victims”.“In a tragic morning, Nashville joined the dreaded, long list of communities to experience a school shooting,” he added.As parents rushed to collect their children from a nearby church, a police officer offered condolences. “I know this is probably the worst day of everyone’s lives,” the officer was heard to tell parents. “I can’t tell you how sympathetic we are.” More