Parkland parent says Wells Fargo’s conduct on guns and marijuana is dishonest

@alextdaugherty

Fred Guttenberg wasn’t happy with Wells Fargo’s decision to keep banking with the gun industry after the Parkland shooting, in which his daughter Jaime was one of the 17 people killed, but he was willing to continue talking when the bank’s CEO told him they wanted to remain politically neutral.

Then came the bank’s decision to shut down Florida Agriculture Commissioner candidate Nikki Fried’s campaign account due to the financial support she received from the medical marijuana industry.

Guttenberg, angrier still with what he perceived as the bank’s hypocritical stance, emailed Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan asking him to reconsider their gun policy now that they waded into marijuana politics. 

He didn’t get a response.

And the final straw came Monday night, when CNN reported that Bloomberg News reassigned a reporter who covered Wells Fargo after the banking giant complained about the reporter’s coverage of Wells Fargo’s ties to the gun industry.

“I think people ought to move their accounts. We’ve seen what Wells Fargo will do to consumers in the past and now we see what they do to those who disagree with them,” Guttenberg said in an interview. “I could have gone public multiple times. When I read today that they’re actually seeking to punish people for covering their bad behavior when it comes to guns, now I’m going to go public because I’m angry.”

Guttenberg, a vocal proponent of increased gun control measures who is working to elect lawmakers who agree with him on the issue, said the Wells Fargo CEO’s behavior is different than others he’s confronted in public, like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“Senator Rubio, he and I have had many private conversations because maybe one day we’ll try to come together,” Guttenberg said. “It became a problem to me when it became clear [Wells Fargo was] lying. I went public when they actually took action against someone.”

Read more here.

Fred Guttenberg cuts ad blasting Mario Diaz-Balart

@alextdaugherty

Fred Guttenberg is going after the one South Florida congressman who accepted National Rifle Association money after the nation's deadliest high school shooting where Guttenberg's daughter Jaime was one of 17 people killed. 

Guttenberg, one of the most outspoken anti-gun Parkland parents, cut an ad that blasts Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart for supporting the NRA on behalf of Diaz-Balart's Democratic challenger, former judge Mary Barzee Flores. 

“Mario Diaz-Balart, after February 14th, after my daughter and 16 others died, you had a choice to make. And you chose to take money from the NRA,” Guttenberg says directly to Diaz-Balart at the beginning of the ad. “You chose to take their money... you’re not worthy of service... you need to be fired.”

Diaz-Balart has accepted more direct campaign contributions from the NRA than any other member of Congress from Florida over the last 20 years, including a $1,000 donation after the shooting in May 2018. His continued support from the NRA comes as other Republican members of Congress from South Florida like Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Brian Mast have distanced themselves from the nation's largest gun lobby. 

Barzee Flores' campaign manager Sam Miller said the ad will run on digital platforms for now, but could end up on TV later in the campaign. 

Guttenberg has traveled around the country and lobbied dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill to change the nation's gun laws since the Valentine's Day shooting. 

"I will be working everyday to support Mary Barzee Flores for Congress," Guttenberg said after lauding her judicial background.

Diaz-Balart's Hialeah-based district that stretches across the Everglades is the most conservative of the three Miami-Dade congressional seats currently held by Republicans, though Democrats consider the district competitive after Donald Trump eked out a narrow win over Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Diaz-Balart hasn't faced a competitive reelection challenge since 2008.

Watch the ad below: 

 

Parkland parents' super PAC releases new ad—but they're waiting to attack pro-gun lawmakers

@alextdaugherty

A group of Parkland parents are getting their hands dirty ahead of the 2018 elections. 

The Families Versus Assault Rifles PAC, a super PAC organized by Parkland parents who want to oust lawmakers that do not support limiting access to assault weapons, banning bump stocks and limiting magazine size, released a new ad that uses footage from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on the day of the shooting and a salvo of gunshots to drum up support for their cause. 

The ad, a 30-second digital spot titled "Mass Shootings are NOT Normal" opens with footage of Parkland students being led away from their classrooms during the shooting before the sound of gunshots cuts in. Then, Parkland parents Sergio Rozenblat and Jeff Kasky urge supporters to join and donate to the cause.

 

"There are certain entities, who are gun lobby entities, who claim certain amounts of membership in the millions of people. There’s one in particular that has 6 million members," Kasky said, referring to the National Rifle Association. "That means there’s 344 million Americans who are not members of your organization. But we also want to be able to say these are the Americans who disagree with your message. You’ve got your 6 million we’ve got our 344 million." 

Kasky started the super PAC shortly after the mass shooting on Valentine's Day and his son Cameron became one of the most visible student leaders in the March for Our Lives effort. The elder Kasky's goal is simple: raise money to fund ad campaigns against lawmakers who don't agree with their agenda. 

Kasky said the group isn't publicly announcing which races around the country will be a part of their effort until after primaries conclude nationwide in a few weeks, though he said the U.S. Senate race between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson along with the race for the open Florida governor's seat are on his radar personally. 

"When we find a candidate who disagrees with us then he or she will be in our crosshairs," Kasky said. "Then, we’ll take a look and see if the investment will be productive." 

The group's process is simple, Kasky said. Candidates or lawmakers are asked about their positions on banning bump stocks, limiting magazine sizes and if they support severely restricting assault weapons. If a candidate answers yes to all three, the group moves on. If not, the group will decide if the candidate is worth attacking during election season. 

"We’re looking at each race as a possible investment, if we look at a race and it looks like we can make a difference and it's close enough," Kasky said. "We know our opponents are very well-funded and that’s why were in this fundraising mode. Say our guy is 25 points behind in a traditionally conservative gun-friendly area, we’re not going to look at it, its a waste of our money." 

So far, the PAC has raised about $200,000 according to federal filings that were due at the end of June. If the group wants to compete with some of the nation's biggest super PACs who can swoop in with TV ads during the final weeks of a campaign it will need to raise millions of dollars. 

"It almost goes against every fiber of my being, I’m a professional mediator," Kasky said of the group's negative approach. "I’m a lover not a fighter, but the other side has made it very clear that this is the way they do things. We’re going to have to get a little dirty." 

Watch the ad here: 

Two Parkland families are backing Philip Levine on TV

@alextdaugherty

Fred Guttenberg and Manuel and Patricia Oliver, the parents of two children killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, are behind Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine's gubernatorial bid. 

Guttenberg and the Olivers, who have traveled around the country promoting increased gun control measures since the Valentine's Day shooting, both cut TV commercials for Levine's campaign that will go on the air tomorrow in the Miami-Dade and West Palm media markets as part of a six-figure ad buy according to Levine's campaign. 

"I am proud to announce my support of Philip Levine for Governor of Florida," Guttenberg tweeted. "I believe firmly that he will strongly support and reinforce the legislation passed after Parkland. #OrangeWaveInNovember." 

I am proud to announce my support of Philip Levine for Governor of Florida. I believe firmly that he will strongly support and reinforce the legislation passed after Parkland. #OrangeWaveInNovember. https://t.co/eK7WW6UYd8

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) August 6, 2018

Levine is trying to emerge victorious in a five-way primary later this month that includes former Rep. Gwen Graham, Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, real estate developer Jeff Greene and businessman Chris King.

"I really believe that Philip is a doer, he can show it, he's part of that team that we're looking for," Manuel said in the ad where he appears beside his wife Patricia. 

Guttenberg in particular gained a national profile after he confronted Sen. Marco Rubio at a televised town hall two weeks after the shooting. He's since appeared at events and protests around the country, arguing that Republicans in Congress aren't doing enough to prevent future mass shootings. 

"Levine's a doer, not a talker," Guttenberg said in his ad.

Watch both ads below: 

 

Bill Nelson wants to ban 3D printer-made plastic guns that can evade metal detectors

@alextdaugherty

In less than 24 hours, it could be possible to legally download blueprints that allow anyone with access to a 3D printer to make guns out of plastic.

Bill Nelson wants to ban it.

The Florida Democrat introduced a bill on Tuesday that would block the online publication of gun blueprints after the Trump administration decided to settle a lawsuit by a Texas anarchist who built a gun out of plastic in 2013 and posted the instructions online.

The Obama administration ordered the instructions to come down at the time, and the Department of Justice defended the government’s action in court after the anarchist sued for the right to publish until the Department of Justice reversed course in June.

“It just defies common sense and yet this is what the Trump administration has done,” Nelson said. “Just think of the billions of dollars we spend trying to protect national security. And now, suddenly there is going to be published on the internet the plans for making a gun that can evade the detection systems in airports and seaports and all of these governmental buildings as well as some sports stadiums.”

The blueprints could go online by midnight Wednesday unless Trump reverses course. On Tuesday morning Trump tweeted, “I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!”

Read more here.

Parkland’s ‘most hated pro-gun advocate’ thrills conservatives

@alextdaugherty

A crowd of 800 teenagers, caffeinated on colorful Starbucks drinks that did not appear to contain coffee, sprang to their feet as Kyle Kashuv, the 17-year-old conservative Parkland student who gained a national following as a counterweight to the March For Our Lives, emerged on stage.

“Guys, we have a surprise for you,” Kashuv said as the riff from AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” played in the background. “You know what that means?”

“David Hogg?” one student shouted back.

“We have shirts. We have shirts! We. Have. Shirts!” Kashuv replied, flinging T-shirts into the frenzied crowd like Frisbees.

Kashuv was in Washington last week for the culmination of months of work with the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, where he now serves as the director of high school outreach. The teenagers in attendance at the group’s high school leadership conference at George Washington University had already been treated to a host of big-name conservative speakers invited by Kashuv, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Instead of giving a talk to the students, Kashuv took questions.

One student who described herself as being from a “deep blue” part of Connecticut asked Kashuv what it was like dealing with liberal teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“A teacher tried to give me like an 89.4 and purposely gave me one point lower on a quiz to an 89.4 so I couldn’t get an ‘A’ in the class,” Kashuv replied. “But I power-moved her. I went to the administration and we made it happen.”

The crowd went wild.

Another asked him, what is his favorite dinosaur?

“T-Rex,” Kashuv said, before pausing and declaring his affinity for triceratops instead, prompting a smattering of jeers and cheers.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, a 24-year-old conservative who gained fame for protesting what he sees as liberal bias on college campuses and who was barred from speaking on Stoneman Douglas’ campus after the shooting, said Kashuv’s involvement with his group has given it more prominence within the conservative community, and it has benefited massively from Kashuv’s work to get dozens of Trump administration officials, members of Congress and celebrities like Mark Cuban to attend the conference.

“All the credit goes to Kyle,” Kirk said. “We’re nothing but an infrastructure that’s helped make this possible. We are a movement, don’t get me wrong, we were doing this before, but Kyle comes in and brings it to the next level. The energy, the enthusiasm, the speakers. He put his time, his talents behind this, and that’s a great partnership because we both benefit from this.”

Kashuv continues to talk about school safety and his support for the Second Amendment six months after the nation’s deadliest high school shooting and has appeared on TV dozens of times, but he’s branched out politically after successfully lobbying for a school safety bill in Congress earlier this year.

“He’s done an amazing job,” Scaramucci said, also emphasizing that his short term as White House communications director that ended after a vulgar rant recorded by a reporter was 11 days, not 10. “I think Kyle’s voice frankly is a much needed voice because it fits into a narrative of school safety, but recognizing that the founding fathers of our country wanted people to have the right to bear arms. I applaud all of these kids though.”

Read more here.

Youth voter registration went up 41 percent in Florida after Parkland

@alextdaugherty

A significant number of young people are registering to vote in Florida, and they could tilt this year’s midterm elections in the nation’s largest swing state, according to a new analysis of voter registration patterns.

The analysis by TargetSmart, a data firm that works on behalf of Democrats, shows that the share of newly registered Florida voters between the ages of 18-29 increased by eight percentage points in the two and a half months after the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Voters between the ages of 18-29 made up 26.23 percent of all new voter registrations in Florida in the two and a half months before Feb. 14, 2018. In the two and a half months after the shooting, young voters made up 34.22 percent of all new voter registrations in Florida.

The eight percentage point gain also shows that young voters are now a bigger share of all new voters. The percentage of new voter registrations from all other age groups in Florida decreased to compensate for the eight-point jump among 18- 29-year-olds.

The total number of young people registering to vote also went up. From Dec. 1, 2017, to Feb. 14, 2018, 27,789 18- 29-year-olds registered in Florida, and between Feb. 14 and April 30, 39,218 young people registered, according to TargetSmart. The 11,429 more voters that registered represent a 41 percent increase.

The total number of new voters from ages 30 to 49 increased slightly after the shooting, while the total number of new voters from ages 49 and up decreased by 4,240 votes in the three months after the shooting.

“A new generation of political leaders emerged in the aftermath of the Parkland tragedy,” TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier said in a statement. “We witnessed their ability to organize in Florida and across the country as massive crowds took to the streets for the March for Our Lives, and now we’re seeing a quantifiable impact from that organizing. It remains to be seen how many of these younger registrants will cast a ballot in November, but they are poised to have a louder voice than ever in these critical midterm elections.”

The increase in young-voter registration among Florida voters as a percentage of the entire electorate ranks seventh among the 40 states where voter registration has been tracked since February, trailing Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, Indiana and Arizona.

Read more here.

Rubio hasn't made a decision on limiting gun magazine size

@alextdaugherty @learyreports

In the week after the nation's deadliest high school shooting in Parkland, Sen. Marco Rubio said he was open to limiting the size of magazines, the spring-loaded devices that feed bullet cartridges into guns.

Four months later, Rubio hasn't decided whether he will back or offer any legislation to limit magazine size, or if he's decided that current law is sufficient. 

"I'm trying not to just find an idea but an idea that can pass," Rubio said Wednesday. "We've talked to a lot of different people involved in the industry on both sides of the debate and we're not prepared to offer any law right now because there's a lot of debate and dispute about what the right number would be and whether it would even make a difference but it's something we'll continue to explore." 

Any potential bill to limit magazine size would need 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to pass.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who has led gun control efforts in Congress since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in his state, said he's "disappointed" that Rubio hasn't taken more public positions against the majority of his party on guns over the past four months, though he credited him for introducing a bill that makes it easier for law enforcement to keep guns out of the hands of people who are suspected of being threats to themselves or others. 

"I certainly got a sign from Marco that he was in a little different space than he was prior to the shooting," Murphy said on Tuesday. "I'm disappointed that hasn't (happened). He did introduce red flag legislation."

Rubio's red flag bill, which he co-introduced with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson in March, has four additional cosponsors. 

"That's the one I do believe can pass and we're looking for an opportunity to do it," Rubio said. 

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not included gun-related legislation among his priorities in the U.S. Senate before the 2018 elections. 

"I think his (GOP) leadership has made it clear they don't want to do anything on guns but I'm hopeful that if the moment changes, he might be willing to take a look at some commonsense measures," Murphy said. "When I think of the handful of Republicans we can ultimately work with if we have a bill on the floor, Rubio is on that list."

Similar legislation to Rubio's red flag bill became law in Florida after the Parkland shooting, but the effort in Washington would enact red flag protections in all 50 states.  

"Any Republican is swimming violently upstream if they are trying to move anti-gun violence legislation with this leadership," Murphy said. "I think we've got to live to fight another day and preserve some potential relationships. Hopefully we can work with Rubio."

Parkland families urge House to pass bill that lets law enforcement confiscate guns

@alextdaugherty

The parents and families of victims killed in the Parkland shooting are urging the House of Representatives to pass a law that gives law enforcement the ability to seize firearms, at least temporarily, from individuals who could be a threat to themselves and others. 

The group of families, who have already secured passage of similar legislation in the Florida Legislature and spurred a bill sponsored by Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson in the U.S. Senate, are trying to get a nationwide law passed in Congress. 

The House proposal is called the "Jake Laird Act" in honor of an Indiana police officer who was killed in 2004 after responding to a call of a man walking in a neighborhood street with a rifle. Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks and Florida Rep. Ted Detuch, who represents Parkland in Congress, announced a federal version of Indiana's existing "red flag" law on Wednesday. 

"We based it on that because there's a track record of it working," Deutch said. "It passed into law in a Republican state signed into law by a Republican governor, it's clearly bipartisan, its worked and its helped to save lives in Indiana." 

"We must be the last families to suffer the loss of a loved one due to a mass shooting at school," the families wrote in a letter to members of Congress. "We demand more action to keep our schools safe, and legislation like the Jake Laird Act is a critical piece of the puzzle." 

Rick Scott was a featured speaker at the 2017 NRA leadership forum. This year, he’s not going.

via @kirbywtweets

What a difference a year makes.

In 2017, Rick Scott gave a fiery speech at the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum in which he appeared to lay the foundation for a 2018 U.S. Senate run.

"We need a larger majority in the U.S. Senate. We need a majority that has the intellectual capacity to comprehend these three words in the Constitution: 'shall not infringe,'" Scott said then, emphasizing each word of that last phrase.

A year later, Scott's Senate campaign is in full swing. And it's time for the 2018 NRA Annual Meetings in Dallas.

The Florida governor won't be there, Scott spokeswoman Lauren Schenone told the Times. She didn't elaborate.

It's no secret that Scott and the NRA have grown more distant since that 2017 speech. The NRA appeared to remove Scott's picture from its website the same day the governor unveiled a post-Parkland legislative package that included modest gun restrictions.

The gun group is currently suing Scott's administration over the post-Parkland gun bill the governor signed into law in March.

Read more: Here's what's in Scott's gun bill.

And Florida NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer wrote a scathing op-ed in April directed at lawmakers who supported that bill.

The event Scott's missing will feature an array of national conservatives, including President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas and NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch. The Trump-supporting social media personalities Diamond & Silk will even address the crowd.

Watch Scott's entire 2017 speech here. And dare to dream of a simpler time.