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Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: We Are Broken

We are broken.

Those were the words of a grieving parent Thursday, the day after his 14-year-old daughter, Jamie, was gunned down by Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting.

Fred Guttenberg spoke at a vigil in the community where thousands of mourners — including Florida Gov. Rick Scott — prayed, wept and reminisced about the 17 victims shot dead by Cruz.

“What is unfathomable is Jamie took a bullet and is dead. I don’t know what I do next,” a torn Guttenberg, whose son Jesse survived the shooting, said. “We are broken.”

State and federal officials, including Scott and President Donald Trump, are flocking to Broward County in the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day shooting, less than two years after many of the same politicians faced the television cameras following the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando that left 49 people dead and dozens of others injured.

The horrific deaths of 14 teenagers and three school staff members — including football coach Aaron Feis, who died shielding students from the bullets hailing from Cruz’s semi-automatic rifle — immediately rekindled the emotionally raw and familiar debate over gun laws, in Florida, in Washington and throughout the nation.

Cruz, who was expelled from the high school, had such a troubled history that some of those who knew him weren’t surprised by his violent outburst.

Yet, advocates of stricter gun laws point out, Cruz was able to legally purchase, without any waiting period, the rifle he used to mow down students and teachers at the school.

Gun rights proponents, meanwhile, stress the need for better mental-health services and argue the Parkland shootings are evidence that people who have concealed-weapons licenses should be allowed to bring guns to schools.

Adding their voices to the conversation, students are demanding action from political leaders like Trump and Scott, who said “everything is on the table.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas junior Cameron Kasky told CNN Friday morning that students felt that “our politicians had abandoned us.”

“This can be stopped,” Kasky said, adding that “thoughts and prayers are appreciated” but “there’s much more that can be done.”

Kasky praised the focus on mental health but said that isn’t enough, asking for state and national leaders to pass guns laws aimed at preventing atrocities like the one on his campus.

“The only people who don’t care are the people who are making the laws,” he said.

SENATE FOCUSES ON MENTAL HEALTH SPENDING

The day after Cruz went on the shooting spree at his former high school, the Florida Senate budget committee approved a plan to steer $100 million to public schools for mental-health screening and services and to boost funding for school safety programs.

Sen. Bill Galvano, a Bradenton Republican who will take over as Senate president in November, pushed for the boost in funding for the plan, which had originally been allocated $40 million. The Senate also wants a $13 million increase for “safe school funding,” used primarily for school resource officers.

Galvano said he is also exploring what, if anything, lawmakers can do to prevent the sale of guns to people like Cruz, who was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and who left a years-long trail of telltale signs of mental illness.

Like Floridians throughout the state, legislators in the Capitol reeled as news continued to emerge about the mass shooting.

Several Broward County lawmakers rushed to South Florida.

State Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a graduate of the Parkland high school, called the scene “surreal.”

“I got here last night. My high school looked like a war zone. Streets that I drive all the time looked like a war zone,” Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, said in a telephone interview Thursday morning.

The neighborhood surrounding the school was peppered with mobile command centers and mass triage units on cordoned-off streets, Moskowitz said.

Moskowitz’s 4-year-old son was learning how to write his name when his teacher’s daughter was mowed down by Cruz, whose lengthy history of disturbing behavior prompted reports to the FBI identifying him as dangerous.

The FBI acknowledged Friday that it had received a call Jan. 5 from a person expressing concern about Cruz’s behavior and the potential that he could conduct a school shooting. But the FBI acknowledged that it did not properly handle the report, with the information not forwarded to a Miami field office for investigation.

Moskowitz, meanwhile, said he doesn’t know what to say to parents who ask him what state lawmakers are going to do to prevent future tragedies.

“We’ll do the same thing we’ve been doing. Which is nothing. We live in a state that if you try to do anything with gun laws and you’re a local official, we will throw you in jail,” he said. “I mean this kid was telling everybody what he was going to do. He was basically wearing a neon sign saying, ‘I am going to come and kill people.’ And yet, he bought a gun legally.”

Florida law bars people who have been involuntarily committed under the Baker Act from purchasing firearms. A 2013 law expanded that prohibition to individuals who voluntarily admit themselves for mental-health treatment.

But Scott indicated he might want an even broader prohibition.

“If someone is mentally ill, they should not have access to a gun,” said Scott, who spoke Thursday with House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron.

Galvano said he, too, is examining the issue.

“We need to explore that issue and understand both the political realities and then the physical realities of someone who has a chronic history of posting things on social media that a lay person could identify as warped. How someone like that, in the existing system, could end up with a firearm that ultimately engages in this,” he said.

But what the shape of legislation would be is unknown.

“I’m looking into that. We’re going to have that discussion. I don’t have a specific answer right now. But we can’t ignore that aspect of it,” Galvano said. “While we’re off having a debate, there are things we can do today to make our students safer.”

CONCEALED WEAPONS PROPOSAL PUT ON HOLD

Meanwhile Thursday, the sponsor of a measure that would allow some concealed-weapons license applications to be approved when background checks have not been completed put her bill on hold after the Parkland atrocity.

The Senate Appropriations Committee had been scheduled to take up the proposal as part of a wide-ranging package (SB 740) involving the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

“This isn’t the day to have that conversation,” bill sponsor Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, said before the committee meeting. “Right now, our priority is to help the situation down there, helping law enforcement. Let’s look at the things at which we can have control, mental health, safety in our schools, that’s the more urgent things to discuss today.”

Kate Kile, the Tallahassee leader of the gun-violence prevention group Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America, said she wasn’t surprised by the postponement, noting the negative attention that could have come after the shootings.

“It would be a pretty bad day to talk about some legislation we feel is very dangerous and not the direction we need to be headed,” Kile said.

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a Republican running for governor, requested the proposed licensing change, which would require concealed-weapons licenses to be issued if Putnam’s office is unable to complete criminal background checks within 90 days and if no other disqualifying information is found. Such situations could occur, for example, if the department receives incomplete criminal-history information.

Any permit issued after the 90-day period would be immediately suspended if the full background history arrives and contains disqualifying information, according to the proposal.

Putnam sent out a statement Thursday before the Senate meeting that “out of respect for their families and those suffering as a result of this tragedy, I’m working with bill sponsors to postpone consideration of the legislative proposal related to the licensing process.”

STORY OF THE WEEK: Nikolas Cruz, 19, was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder after gunning down 14 students and three faculty members Wednesday at Broward County’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the nation’s second-worst school shooting in history.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Something is better than nothing. So I’ll take anything. Give me something to go back to these parents and say, ‘This time was different. We did something.’ ” — State Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, referring to a Senate plan to steer $100 million to public schools for mental health screening and services.

by Dara Kam, the News Service of Florida