The other day Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joined my radio program to talk about his new book and some of the other policy issues that are reshaping the state into a Republican powerhouse. We covered a number of topics over 15 minutes, including the expected passage of Constitutional Carry:
Florida has been a wild state to watch these past ten years. I covered the 2012 election and remember how my heart sank as I watched Florida’s results tabulated. Barack Obama had won the election and it was over. Obama took Florida with 51% of the vote in 2008 and by 50% in 2012. Florida was blue.
Fast forward to current era. There isn’t a single Democrat in statewide elected office for the first time since Reconstruction. Florida went to Trump in 2016 with 49% of the vote and in 2020 by 51%. DeSantis, who Trump endorsed in 2016, historically expanded on his and state office wins. He flipped both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. DeSantis won Miami-Dade by over 11 points after losing the county by 18 points in 2018.
DeSantis and Republicans hit the ground with an aggressive GOTV strategy and in the end registered nearly 300k more voters than what Democrats registered. Registered Republican voters beat registered Democrat voters for the first time in the state’s history. Republicans took a 2/3 supermajority in the state legislature.
Politically, Florida is a very different state now than it was in 2012 and in 2018.
On Valentine’s Day 2018 a murderous, known repeat offender slipped by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s non-existent security and killed 17 students.
Lawmakers felt the pressure to “do something,” but unfortunately that “something” didn’t include following up on repeated calls to law enforcement about a known violent person’s documented dangerous behavior, which included knocking out his own mother’s teeth, putting a gun to students’s heads prior, and sending death threats online.
A week after the tragedy I was in Parkland at the now-infamous townhall. I wrote about it in my third book, excerpted here. Backstage I watched Senator Marco Rubio cave to red flag laws on national television. Off-camera in the days that followed, numerous Republican lawmakers in the state felt the same pressure. Many also caved.
Even President Trump verbatim called for red flag laws:
He pushed back on Senator Feinstein’s demand for an assault weapons ban (included in second video).
Not long after, then-Florida Governor Rick Scott signed into law the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, a large package that addressed school security, mental health, and introduced a red flag law, the latter which came as a compromise for state Republicans.
Later in 2018 DeSantis ran for governor and during the campaign voiced his opposition to the MSD Public Safety Act and red flag laws, saying “I would have vetoed it”:
I have a hard time believing that today’s Florida legislature would have passed a red flag law. The issue now is whether or not they can repeal a red flag law. Some of the folks I’ve met over the years include people who work with policy in Tallahassee. I’m told there is some strong resistance within some of the GOP legislature against repealing red flags.
Since DeSantis said he’s eager to sign a Constitutional Carry bill I don’t doubt that he’d sign a bill repealing red flag law, too. Grassroots want DeSantis to demand open carry be added to the Constitutional Carry bill, still in its infancy, having just days ago passed from the Florida House Judiciary Committee. (I’ve railed endlessly against red flag laws here, here, here, here, and in two books, to start.)
My point in sharing all of this isn’t to make excuses for the Florida legislature or dunk on Trump, whom I’ve known for years and has been on my radio program many times.
I’ve met both Trump and DeSantis. This isn’t anything new in my line of work.
Over the past few days a number of known operatives, who have previously worked with the former president, have argued that the existence of red flag law in Florida is evidence that DeSantis is anti-Second Amendment, or at least, weak on gun rights. This means, they argue implicitly, DeSantis is the weaker (and undeclared) candidate. Their gripe is literally that DeSantis didn’t remove the law that Trump demanded passed.
It’s a dumb argument.
It’s a dumb argument because it’s the same as arguing that Trump is pro-Obamacare because he didn’t repeal it. Trump isn’t Congress. DeSantis isn’t the legislature. Trump didn’t repeal Obamacare all by himself for the same reason DeSantis didn’t repeal Florida’s red flag law all by himself: other lawmakers.
In what may be the most controversial aspect of this piece: I don’t think Trump deserves all of the blame for his complicity in the passage of the bumpstock ban, either. Congress’s job is to write clear laws and legislatively wrangle (unneeded) bureaucratic agencies, so that bureaucrats like those at the ATF can’t weasel in with zero oversight and demand their rules be followed as law — while the same members of Congress look the other way and continue funding said unnecessary agency. See the recent ATF screw-up on pistol braces.
As I said earlier, my point in sharing all of this is to correct a false narrative. People are going to support who they want to support but I dislike this trend of gaslighting people with fake news so as to disingenuously move them on an issue.
I also hate the idea of fealty.
We fought a war over bending the knee. Question anyone who demands that you do so. I don’t care who they are, politicians should have to earn your vote every election.
Anything else is a monarchy, not a republic.
The Second Amendment and 2024
Don't worry. Corporate Republicans will Zuck it up.
Best cure for these problems is education.
Best way to get education is to do it yourself.