Florida Gun Owners Rally Troops For Open Carry Fight
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 10 months ago
Gun advocates in Florida didn’t take a break over the holiday weekend. Florida Open Carry Inc. began rallying its troops New Year’s Eve with a mass email in support of “the most important pro-Second Amendment rights bill of the 2017 legislative session.”
SB 140 repeals laws forbidding guns on college campuses, in airports terminals, and at government meetings. Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, will introduce the measure to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Florida Open Carry Inc. urged its members to call lawmakers and tell them to line up behind Steube’s proposal.
Campus carry and open carry measures have died in the committee the past two years when the chair failed to schedule it for a vote. Advocates believe 2017 will be different because Steube is the committee’s new chair. He served the past six years in the Florida House where he was one of the Legislature’s fiercest opponents to gun-free zones.
“If you want to kill as many people as possible before the cops arrive then you are likely to go to a place where law-abiding citizens can’t carry,” Steube explained when he filed the bill last month. “That’s what we’ve seen, time and time again and why I think we shouldn’t have them.”
After the ouster of Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, over this very issue, it ought to be clear that gun owners are serious. Also, I admire how they know this is going to be a fight and are gearing up for the battle. If they don’t succeed this time, I advocate ousting the committee chair who doesn’t allow it to come up for vote, and try again next time. Never give up.
Say, what’s going on with South Carolina open carry? I don’t even see a proposed bill on that. How sad. It’s sort of like gun owners in South Carolina have given up, satisfied with being second class citizens if they want to be comfortable in their carry options or quicker with their weapon presentation in a crisis.
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