Are They Going to be Real Volunteers This Time?

Moms Demand Action and Everytown (which is to say Bloomberg) are planning on flooding legislative sessions with activists. One wonders whether their “more than 100 volunteers” will once again be paid protesters, or whether they’ve found some real moms who care enough about the issue to give up a weekday. Florida has a very active session planned:

  • Bill to legalize open carry in Florida. Open carry isn’t my thing, but I don’t see why it ought to be criminalized.
  • Legalize carrying of firearms in non-sterile parts of Airports. If someone is intent on shooting up the place, they aren’t going to be deterred by a sign or a law on the books somewhere.
  • Allow firearms to be carried on college campuses. College students are adults. I don’t think it’s ever made any sense to restrict permit holders from carrying on college campuses.
  • Allow concealed weapons permit holders to carry guns at any legislative meeting, committee meeting, county or local government meeting. Local government meetings are a magnet for kooks and crazies, which is why I’d like to carry a gun if I go to one. Again, not going to deter anyone intending to shoot up the place.
  • Legalize carrying firearms by permit holders in career centers? What the hell is a career center? This is a prohibition I’ve never heard of in any other state.
  • Require that courthouses provide temporary storage for permit holders. This is already the law in Pennsylvania, so I don’t see why Florida shouldn’t join the fun.
  • Expansion of stand-your-ground to place the burden on prosecutors to prove that there is no viable self-defense claim. This is what they’ll fight tooth and nail.
  • Ballot measure on eliminating the 72-hour waiting period for LEOs to buy personal handguns. I’d vote “no” on this. I don’t see why they shouldn’t have to follow the same rules as the peasantry.

That’s pretty ambitious, but Marion Hammer is a force of nature, unlike Shannon Watts, and the Demanding Moms, who are a force of Bloomberg. I know which one I’d be more scared of if I were a Florida legislator.

8 thoughts on “Are They Going to be Real Volunteers This Time?”

  1. A career center is a vocational-technical school. This is there because the law also excludes colleges and secondary schools. Since career centers offer adult education courses, but not for college credit, they are not colleges or secondary schools.

  2. Sincere question: In your linked NRA-ILA article, why did the NRA conclude the LWV activists were “paid activists” because they belonged to a single group and apparently used resources (e.g., T-shirts) provided by an organization?

    While I know the LWV (aka, League of Women Vultures) takes a consistently leftist line on most things, my personal knowledge of them is that they are useful idiots who indeed are voluntary sheep; they may accept a bus ride and possibly a box lunch, but otherwise the rank-and-file do what they do for free; and I personally have accepted free rides to Harrisburg to rally for gun rights, so I don’t see the ethical difference.

    Please understand that I am asking this only as a student of political tactics. I have known so many useful idiots in all camps in my time, that I’m constantly suspicious of the “paid demonstrators” meme. I traveled to Harrisburg on my own dime more times than I can count, to serve other peoples’ agendas. I have no reason to believe people on the left (especially True Believing Civics Class Ladies) are any less motivated.

    1. I was going to say I’m more prone to believing it having caught them paying fake protesters before personally, but my memory must be getting faulty, because it was AHSA protesters that we had first hand knowledge of and not Bloomberg’s group (at the time).

    2. That year in Louisville was “Hey, let’s go up and talk to the protesters. That’ll be worth a blog post.” And then with the protesters admitting that they didn’t know anything about the issue and were paid to be there.

      NRA was protested in Pittsburgh last time they were there, but those people were real. There were accusations that Moms Demand Protesters in Indianapolis were paid to be there, but I never talked to any of them.

  3. I’d also oppose the LEO exemption. There is no reason why LEOs should have more rights than me.

    And my LEO friends don’t disagree.

  4. IIRC, the reason behind getting open carry in FL is so the cops stop gigging someone for their jacket hanging open or their shirt coming untucked or stuff like that. Wardrobe failures should not be felonies.

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