Friday, September 16, 2011

Pandering to the Gun Lobby

Thanks to gunpolicy.org , The above titled NYT editorial about Florida trashing its gun laws came to my attention. The editorial asks how long can gutting gun laws go on?

Local Florida officials are scrambling to meet an Oct. 1 deadline by which they must scrap all local gun control laws.

The Florida Legislature passed a law that allowed the state to pre-empt the whole field of gun and ammunition controls in 1987, but it had very little effect on real life. “No Guns Allowed” signs and other notices were kept up in appropriate places as communities continued to enforce gun ordinances already on their books.

That is about to change under a new law passed in June by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Local governments could face penalties of $100,000 for not dropping their gun control laws. Local officials could face a $5,000 fine and possible removal from office. And court costs are explicitly denied for local officials if they are sued by gun owners under the new law.

Cities like St. Petersburg are rushing to repeal sensible ordinances against firing guns in the city limits. Other communities are busy removing bans on carrying guns into public parks. They must also repeal their authority to suspend gun and ammunition sales during public emergencies. “We’re not allowed to have bows and arrows or slingshots in a park, but we can have a gun,” a town council member in Oldsmar said to The St. Petersburg Times.

The question is how far does the firearms lobby's shit have to go before people get outraged and start to push back?

But what I liked best about this editorial was the comment that "Even the Supreme Court, in its ruling that misread the Second Amendment as a personal right to bear arms, stressed that it was not casting doubt on a wide range of gun control laws passed to protect communities from gun violence."

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