Florida Pro-Gun Bills Dead Yet Again © 2017 Phillip Evans

First of all, I need to eat a little crow. I had misstated the powers of the Florida Legislature's Senate President.

I didn't quite make it up out of thin air, but...grrr! I got the info secondhand, and shame on me, I didn't verify it.

Finally, I downloaded the Senate Rules (because someone corrected me) and searched through them. To my chagrin, I didn't see where the Senate President could just take a bill out of one committee and put it in another, or place it directly on the Senate floor.

Mea culpa, mea culpa!

Trusting the source is no excuse. I should have researched it.

So now, where are we at with Senate President Joe Negron and my holding him fully responsible for the failure of the Open Carry, Campus Carry, and Airport Carry bills to get out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for a full vote?

Photo by Daylina Miller / WUSF

We're still at the same place, that's where. Joe Negron is still the man to blame.

Here's why:

The Senate Judiciary Committee is composed of five Republicans and four Democrats.

Senator Negron appointed each one of them to that committee, as the Senate President's job is to appoint all members to their various committees.

When Sen. Negron appointed Sen. Greg Steube as the Senate Judiciary Chair, hopes went up that Sen. Steube's pro-liberty carry bills would see the light of day, and make it to the Governor's desk. 

However, all four Democrats Sen. Negron appointed to the Judiciary committee were opposed to the three earlier mentioned bills - no surprise there. And two of the Republicans he put on the committee, Sens. Anitere Flores and Rene Garcia, were also opposed to the bills.

That makes 6 to 3 against - two to one odds!

Senate President Joe Negron stacked the deck against us! Some have been calling out Sen. Flores as a turncoat and traitor, and she is. But the one who did the deck stacking is the one most responsible.

Was Sen. Negron just being clumsy and incompetent when he appointed those particular Senate Judiciary members? No. He knew precisely what he was doing. When you appoint your trusted friends, you know how they will rule on key issues, and Negron KNEW Senator Steube was about to drop on the table a strong bill that would substantially restore the exercise of Second Amendment Rights in Florida.

But restoring lost liberty was never a priority for Negron. Sabotaging our rights was the priority, apparently.

When all the gun rights proposals were initially introduced as a single bill, SB 140, it initially looked like Sen. Negron was doing the right thing by assigning it to "three committees, all chaired by conservative Republicans who passionately support gun-owners’ rights". 

But that turned out to just be smoke and mirrors, since having committees chaired by conservative Republicans doesn't mean diddly-squat if you've appointed a majority of committee members that would rule just the opposite.

Call and email Sen. Negron to let him know of your displeasure with his orchestrated derailing of Sen. Steube's pro-liberty bills that never reached the Senate floor for a full and honest vote.

I've also stated before that Senator Steube should be raising Cain and publicly calling out Sen. Negron to over-rule Flores. Instead, I should have said that he should have asked Sen. Negron to sign a motion to move the pro-carry measures (once they were broken up into multiple bills) out of the Judiciary Committee and into a more favorable committee, and then raise Cain if he declined.

Once such a motion was signed, it would have required a 2/3 vote of the full Senate, but had the vote occurred it would have put each Senator on record where they stood on our rights. 

However, I'm sure Negron would have refused the request. But those like Negron have to be pushed, poked, and prodded every which way but loose to teach them that each time they shrink back from their duty to honor the Constitution, more light is shone on them revealing what they really are.

Milktoast RINOs once again have denied us the restoration of our liberty. Folks, it's really up to us now to demand our rights, and with a much louder voice this time.

If truth be told most of the Republicans in the Florida Senate are RINOs. Why do you think they keep electing Senate Presidents like Andy Gardiner and Joe Negron? To give them cover to avoid an honest up or down vote on bills that restore our liberty to carry, that's why!

And I never once heard Gov. Rick Scott open his mouth to give one word of support to the bills, or to urge the Senate to get them to a vote. Silent again this year as he was last year. Some champion of our rights, huh?

With regard to open carry, RINOs wrung their hands over a perceived impact to tourist dollars, and put our rights at the back of the bus behind $$$.

So poke a finger in the eye of those hypocrite, lip-service politicians who laugh at us as they get their A+ NRA ratings. From now on carry concealed but in an obvious manner, being careful to do so on publicly owned property (beaches, parks, zoos, museums, libraries, etc) where you cannot be ejected or excluded merely for being armed, due to state preemption. Verify the location is actually owned by the city, county, or state. 

Check out this blog post on "Concealed Open Carry", and how it's a powerful way to use your First Amendment Rights to help get back your Second Amendment Rights.