Bill named after Parkland victim Jaime Guttenberg puts background checks on bullets

@alextdaugherty

Last month, Democrats in the House of Representatives passed a plan to expand background checks on gun purchases.

Now, Parkland parent Fred Guttenberg and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz are offering a new plan to require universal background checks on ammunition purchases. The bill is named after Guttenberg’s daughter Jaime, one of 17 students and staff killed on Valentine’s Day last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“We have a gun violence death rate in this country right now of approximately 40,000 per year. It is not normal,” Guttenberg said. “In the time that we do this press conference, somebody will learn they are a victim of gun violence, somebody will be buried who is a victim of gun violence and somebody will be planning the funeral for a victim of gun violence. I am not okay with that.”

The background checks for ammunition would work the same way as background checks for firearms. Every time someone of legal age attempts to purchase ammunition, the buyer would be subject to a background check, which Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said would take 30 seconds to one minute to complete.

“Even though ammunition is every bit as necessary for the operation of a firearm as the firearm itself, federal law does not require a background check to prevent prohibited purchasers from purchasing ammunition,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Jaime’s Law will close this ammo loophole.”

Guttenberg acknowledged that the bill’s chances of passing the Republican-controlled Senate are low, though he thinks voters in 2020 will punish Senate Republicans who refuse to vote in favor of tighter gun restrictions. As evidence, Guttenberg stood next to freshman California Rep. Mike Levin, who replaced an 18-year Republican incumbent last year.

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South Florida lawmaker who took NRA cash after Parkland votes for background checks

@alextdaugherty

The National Rifle Association is running out of friends in South Florida.

Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who received campaign cash from the NRA four months after the Parkland shooting, distanced himself from the nation’s largest pro-gun lobby and sided with Democrats to expand background checks last week. Diaz-Balart’s new stance blunts a potential 2020 campaign talking point for Democrats, who hammered him on his gun record last year but still came up 21 percentage points short of unseating one of the most well-known figures in Miami politics.

Diaz-Balart says his support for expanding background checks does not represent a philosophical shift on guns, though he did not add his name as a co-sponsor for a background check bill in the last Congress that received the support of 210 lawmakers, including 14 Republicans. He also voted in favor of an NRA-backed bill in 2017 that would have made it easier for gun owners with concealed carry permits to transport their weapons across state lines.

“The bill is super flawed but I figured that it is actually the closest one to being a real effort to get something that might be able to get negotiations in the Senate,” Diaz-Balart said in an interview. “The concept of people having background checks is obviously something I support. The bill wasn’t well-drafted but I figured it’s not a bad place to start and we’ll see what happens.”

In 2018, Diaz-Balart was attacked over his stance on guns by Democratic opponent Mary Barzee Flores, Parkland parents and a host of national gun control groups. Diaz-Balart is also the single largest recipient of direct NRA campaign cash among Floridians in Congress since 1998, partially due to his status as the state’s longest-tenured Republican.

Though he easily won reelection last year, 2020 could be a different story for Miami’s only House Republican in a district where President Donald Trump is not popular.

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How Parkland parents and lawmakers built relationships to help prevent school violence

@alextdaugherty

Days after the Parkland shootings just over a year ago, Fred Guttenberg and Marco Rubio met for the first time on national television.

The Republican senator, who introduced pro-gun legislation while gearing up for a 2016 presidential run, was booed by thousands in the CNN townhall audience as the father of Jaime Guttenberg, one of 17 people killed in the nation’s deadliest high school shooting, grilled him.

“Your comments this week, and those of our president, have been pathetically weak,” Guttenberg said, his voice trembling. “Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in this school this week. And, look at me and tell me you accept it, and you will work with us to do something about guns.”

Rubio said he was supportive of laws that prevent 18- to 21-year-olds from purchasing rifles, though he wasn’t in favor of a ban on assault-style weapons. Further jeers followed when he said the National Rifle Association donates to his campaigns because they buy into his view of the Second Amendment, not the other way around.

But a year after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings, the Republican officials who were vilified on stage have closer relationships with the families of the victims than two officials who received applause during the television town hall: suspended Broward Sheriff Scott Israel and Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie. Those relationships developed away from the cameras, press conferences and viral social media posts, and are largely policy-focused, even as Rubio’s views on guns have remained unchanged despite some of the statements he made on stage that night.

“I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to meet some of them without the town hall,” Rubio said. “I’m glad I went.”

Since the shooting, Rubio said he has met at least two dozen times with five or six of the families and stayed in constant contact with them. But their conversations are very different than the exchange at that early townhall in Broward’s BB&T Center.

“Our meetings are largely about the issues that affect them,” Rubio said. “From time to time the conversation might be about another topic, but in terms of politics, when they come to DC they’re not coming to hang out, they’re coming here to get work done.”

Some of the parents are now so well connected with federal agencies they don’t need lawmakers or their staffs to set up meetings, Rubio said.

Their shared work involves issues where Rubio and the families are in agreement, like increasing funding for school safety and passing nationwide red-flag laws that make it easier for law enforcement to identify potentially dangerous individuals. Other times families come to Washington to support causes, like banning assault rifles, where they actively oppose Rubio.

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‘None of us had a grasp of how difficult this would be:’ Parkland PAC scales back

@benbwieder @alextdaugherty

A political action committee launched by parents of Parkland students is scaling back its 2018 midterm plans in the wake of disappointing fund raising totals.

The group, Families vs. Assault Rifles, was launched in May by Jeffrey Kasky and Sergio Rozenblat, the parents of students who survived the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The pair worked with Matt Gohd, the group’s California-based executive director, who said he was inspired by the shooting to become more involved politically.

“I have a teenage daughter, I wanted to feel like I had done everything I could to make sure this didn’t happen again,” Gohd said.

At its launch, Gohd, a long-time Democratic donor who has worked at numerous investment firms, told the Miami Herald it had an ambitious goal: to raise $10 million and act as a counterweight to the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful and successful politcal activist groups in the country. It planned to target politicians who opposed gun safety regulations. So far, it’s only raised $230,000 – much of which came soon after the group was first launched. From July through the end of September, the group took in less than $30,000 and had only $13,000 left in the bank..

“None of us had a grasp of how difficult this would be,” Gohd said. “We needed more resources, more people.”

The group is currently “regrouping,” Gohd said, as it considers its next steps, with a thought to greater activity in the 2020 presidential election cycle.

“I would say it was idealistic of us to think that we could get something through at this point,” Gohd said.

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Pelosi touts gun control in Broward visit with Parkland parents

@martindvassolo @alextdaugherty

Democrats may be wary of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in other parts of the country, but she’s welcome in South Florida.

With the midterm elections just weeks away, Parkland students and parents convened Wednesday with Pelosi in Coral Springs to game plan for November. The round table discussion focused on gun control, moderated by U.S. Rep Ted Deutch, was equal parts emotional venting and strategizing.

Pelosi called the activists and parents a “blessing to our country,” and said because of the energy coming out of Parkland, the issue of gun control would top the Democratic Party’s agenda in the House of Representatives if they take control.

“I admire you so much,” she said. “You have the purpose, the generosity of spirit. You have the marchers — you have people who will go out there to make a difference — and you just have a relentless, persistent, dissatisfied approach.”

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Gun control group investing millions in the 2018 election endorses a Miami Republican

@alextdaugherty

A national gun control group co-founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is endorsing Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo in the nation’s most expensive House race.

Everytown for Gun Safety announced Tuesday that Curbelo was one out of 10 Florida lawmakers running for statewide or federal office who received an endorsement, and the only Republican on the list. Curbelo faces Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the November general election for a Miami-to-Key West seat that has seen more TV spending from both sides than any other House race in the country.

“A sincere national dialogue and Congressional action to modernize gun safety has remained elusive for far too long,” Curbelo said in a statement. “Public officials — and our society as a whole — must work together to close outdated loopholes and address vulnerabilities in our laws, while still protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights. I’m humbled by this endorsement, and I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to keep Americans safe.”

Curbelo has not been able to pass substantive gun control legislation over the past two years in Washington, though he did introduce a bill after the Las Vegas shooting that would ban devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire like automatic weapons and he criticized the National Rifle Association when it didn’t back his bill. His campaign also donated money to a transportation fund that allowed Parkland students to attend the March For Our Lives in Washington.

Mucarsel-Powell has also made guns a part of her campaign message, noting in ads that she lost her father to gun violence when she was 24. She supports an assault weapons ban while Curbelo has said an assault weapons ban should be “on the table.”

Everytown is one of the nation’s largest gun control organizations and announced on Monday that it plans to dump at least $2 million to help the Democratic candidates seeking Florida cabinet positions — and Republicans running for the state Senate who helped pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act over the objections of the NRA. The organization has also made six-figure donations to Democrat Andrew Gillum’s gubernatorial campaign.

“Everytown is a bipartisan organization and we support candidates of both parties who stand up for gun violence prevention,” spokesperson Kate Folmar said in a statement. “Both Rep. Curbelo and his opponent are champions of gun violence prevention. Rep. Curbelo has a proven track record of Congressional leadership on gun safety issues and we are proud to endorse him.”

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How Parkland school massacre turned guns into a top 2018 campaign issue in Florida

@alextdaugherty

Gun rights have motivated portions of the Republican base in Florida for years, but the script has changed in 2018.

The National Rifle Association sued the state of Florida after Gov. Rick Scott and 67 state lawmakers with an “A” rating from the nation’s largest gun group signed a bill that bans anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing a firearm. Congress passed a bill that authorizes funding for school safety measures after the nation’s deadliest high school shooting in Parkland, but hasn’t taken up other ideas that would limit access to firearms. Republicans running in competitive congressional races across Florida say they are open to a ban on assault weapons.

Parkland and the March For Our Lives movement started by a group of Broward County high school students have thrust gun politics into the top tier of issues ahead of the 2018 elections, where Democrats are hoping to keep Bill Nelson’s U.S. Senate seat and flip up to a half dozen congressional seats that could determine which party wins the majority in the House of Representatives.

“Even if you go back 10 years, it’s amazing how much this issue has changed,” said Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who ran Barack Obama’s 2008 Florida campaign. “If you looked at the polling, people supported background checks and banning certain types of weapons, but the entire energy for voting was on the other side. A larger swath of the population is saying that if you’re not reasonable about gun safety, we’re not going to vote for you.”

Though Parkland is in overwhelmingly Democratic Broward County, congressional candidates in nearby Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties have changed their tune on guns in the last year. Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, running for reelection in a Democratic-leaning district, called on Congress to ban devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to function like automatic rifles after the Las Vegas shooting in October 2017. Treasure Coast Republican Rep. Brian Mast cited his military experience when calling for an assault weapons ban after Parkland. Miami congressional candidate Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican, said this week that she supports background checks on guns and is open to an assault-weapons ban.

All three breezed through their respective Republican primaries even though Mast drew two challengers after announcing his stance against assault weapons, and Salazar faced a host of challengers who were more conservative on guns.

“The threat that the NRA has made for years is that if you oppose us, you will lose,” Schale said, adding that zero Republican incumbents who signed the state-level gun bill or called for more gun restrictions after Parkland lost their primaries. “If you look at folks like Brian Mast who came out for an assault weapons ban... it’s hard to imagine in the past that a GOP member of Congress could come out with that position without being completely terrified of the NRA.”

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March For Our Lives founder leaves the group, regrets trying to ‘embarrass’ Rubio

@alextdaugherty

Cameron Kasky became one of the most recognizable faces of the March For Our Lives Movement after he helped raise millions of dollars in a matter of days for a gun-control rally and confronted Sen. Marco Rubio on television after the nation’s deadliest high school shooting .

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior spent weeks organizing a massive march in Washington that morphed into a nationwide movement and summer bus tour, with an eye toward the upcoming November election.

Now, Kasky is leaving the group.

“I’m proud of everything my friends have done, everything they’re doing, and my focus on opening these conversations to people who disagree with me makes me even more invested in just how important the work they’re doing is,” Kasky said in an email.

Kasky first announced his decision to leave March For Our Lives in an interview with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson on Wednesday, where he also expressed regret for the way he talked to Rubio during a town hall event broadcast on CNN. At the town hall, Kasky said, “Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is you’re here and there some people who are not.” He then grilled the Republican senator over accepting political contributions from the National Rifle Association.

“I look back on that and I say, you know what, there were people who had just been buried and when you’re looking at somebody that you find might in some way have been complicit in this murderer obtaining the weapon it’s hard not to say something like that,” Kasky said to Fox. “But, I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio and that was my biggest flaw.”

Kasky also said he regrets referring to Cruz by name during the town hall and that he met people during the March For Our Lives bus tour this summer in Texas who share different political beliefs than his, but that he came away wanting to understand more about their differences.

“This summer when March For Our Lives went on the summer tour that we embarked on I met that person in Texas who got that semi-automatic weapon because that’s how they like to protect their family,” Kasky told Fox. “I met the 50-some-odd percent of women who are pro-life, even though I thought it was preposterous that a woman could be pro-life and not pro-choice at the time. I learned that a lot of our issues politically come from a lack of understanding of other perspectives and also the fact that so often young conservatives and young liberals will go into debate, like I said earlier, trying to beat the other one as oppose to come to an agreement... I’m working on some efforts to encourage bipartisanship or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I made.”

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How a snubbed handshake influenced Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing

@alextdaugherty

Democrats don’t have the votes to stop Brett Kavanaugh, so they turned his Supreme Court confirmation hearing into a spectacle.

Protesters dressed up in costumes from the dystopian TV drama “The Handmaid’s Tale,” dozens were arrested after interrupting proceedings in the Senate Judiciary Committee and one senator compared himself to Spartacus after daring his colleagues to expel him for releasing supposedly confidential emails from Kavanaugh that had actually been declassified hours earlier.

But the Parkland shooting also played a role in arguments against Kavanaugh’s supposedly genial personality and future rulings on gun issues if confirmed to the lifetime position on the nation’s highest court.

Aalayah Eastmond, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Eastmond recounted in detail her experience on Valentine’s Day, when she hid beneath Nicholas Dworet’s body to shield herself from the bullets. At least one senator, Cory Booker of New Jersey, was in tears.

Then she turned to Fred Guttenberg’s snubbed handshake from earlier in the week, when the Supreme Court nominee declined to shake the hand of the Parkland parent and gun control activist whose daughter Jaime was among the victims.

“If Kavanaugh doesn’t even have the decency to shake hands with a father of a victim, he definitely won’t have the decency to make life-changing decisions that affect real people,” Eastmond testified.

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Brett Kavanaugh declines to shake Parkland parent’s hand at confirmation hearing

@alextdaugherty

Brett Kavanaugh stood up for a lunch break, began to button up his jacket and turned around to find the outstretched hand of Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland mass shooting on Valentine’s Day.

Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, declined to shake it.

“Just walked up to Judge Kavanaugh as the morning session ended,” Guttenberg tweeted. “Put out my hand to introduce myself as Jaime Guttenberg’s dad. He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away. I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence.”

The three-second exchange instantly went viral, as Democrats are trying to muster attacks on Kavanaugh even though they likely don’t have the votes to stop his eventual confirmation. The first leg of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday was frequently interrupted by protesters in the room, with encouragement from Democrats.

The White House said Guttenberg, a vocal advocate for increased gun-control measures who has traveled to Capitol Hill frequently over the last six months to push for changes in legislation, was “an unidentified individual” and that security intervened before Kavanaugh could shake his hand.

“As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him,” White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah tweeted. “Before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened.”

Guttenberg called Shah's version of events "incorrect." 

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