Florida with Jim DeFede.
>>Welcome to Facing South Florida.
I'm Jim DeFede.
And as you may be aware,
the Florida legislature in Tallahassee
is quickly moving forward
with a plan to allow anyone who owns a gun
to carry it in public without a concealed weapons permit.
As the bill was being heard
on the floor of the house last week,
I spoke to Fred Guttenberg whose daughter Jaime
was killed in the massacre
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School five years ago.
I asked for his reaction.
>>Anger.
Listen, Jim,
I visit my daughter at a cemetery
because of gun violence.
And these legislators are putting the needs
of a presidential candidate
'cause he's really more focused on that
than he says on being a governor
ahead of the needs of Floridians.
And I can say that confidently because Floridians,
by a measure, I think, 70,
I forget the exact number but it's 70 something percent
don't want them to do this.
That has been clear in polls.
And what they're getting ready to do
is pass what they are calling permitless carry.
I call it untrained and dangerous carry
because that's what it is.
They failed at their initial announcement
when they tried to call it constitutional carry.
There really is no such thing.
It's a made up marketing term.
So, they moved on to calling it permitless
but it is dangerous in every measure.
And if you go back to the initial press conference
where they brought in a few sheriffs to talk about it,
one of them was asked,
how will you know
if somebody with a gun
has of permit, is or isn't a dangerous person?
'Cause we all know
dangerous people are now getting run out and buy guns.
He said, we'll know after they commit a crime with the gun.
That was his answer.
So, it's a dangerous, dangerous endeavor
to just start saying,
we're no longer gonna check
and we're no longer gonna require training.
But as a slap in the face to families like mine,
they've gone further.
Because if you are caught on a school campus
as part of this legislation now with a gun,
the penalty used to be a felony,
they're reducing it to a misdemeanor.
For whatever reason, that's what they're gonna do
as part of this legislation.
So, if you're a student
who wants to commit a crime on a campus with a gun,
you now may go out and test it before you do anything
because the penalty won't be significant.
I don't understand what they're doing here
except a political decision that is unnecessary
because the lesson of the Parkland legislation
that was passed five years ago
is that it was politically popular
to pass gun safety legislation in Florida.
Not a single person lost a job,
they've all been reelected
or they are currently serving in a different capacity.
Look at Senator Rick Scott.
He was the governor at the time who led the legislation.
He's now a senator.
So, politically, this is dumb,
morally, this is reprehensible,
and sadly, this is going to lead to more Floridians dying
because of gun violence.
>>So, then why do you think they're doing it?
>>Because there is a contender for president
who currently serves as governor
who said,
he wants them to
because he thinks this is gonna help him
with the base politics in a Republican primary.
It is no longer about the safety of Floridians.
And I hope every Floridian understands that.
And when they had a chance to vote in the future,
they start voting all of these lunatics out
because that's what they are.
>>Obviously we were talking about permitless carry.
But there is also a possibility,
although I think it's fading, to be honest
of open carry.
I spoke to Speaker Renner a few weeks ago
and he told me he doesn't oppose open carry,
he just isn't willing to move forward with it
until the sheriffs are comfortable.
And since the sheriffs have raised some objections
to open carry, he's not supportive at this moment
but he could be supportive at some point.
So, let's talk about open carry.
The notion of being able to go anywhere you want,
not just having it concealed on your person
as what will happen with permitless carry.
So, you won't know if a person is carrying gun.
Then you go to open carry
where people could sling a rifle over their shoulder
and just walk about the city.
>>And then you are supposed to decide
which one of those is a good guy who won't use that rifle
and which one isn't.
That's the reality of open carry.
And by the way, every state where open carry
and/or permitless carry has been passed.
Their gun violence rates have gone way up.
It does not do anything for public safety.
But regarding open carry, listen,
this governor, future presidential candidate
has made it clear, he supports open carry.
Fortunately, law enforcement is against it for now.
The majority of law enforcement
is also against permitless care,
but there were enough-
>>But they haven't been speaking up.
Why haven't they been speaking up?
>>You're a hundred percent right.
They found a handful of sheriffs in law enforcement
from around the state
that did speak out in favor of permitless.
The majority are not in favor of this.
You talk to cops on the street,
they do not want this.
They understand the risks, but they're not speaking up.
You're a hundred percent right and I hope they start.
Because this isn't only about your public safety and mine,
this is also about their public safety.
They're gonna be more at risk of gun violence as well
and they should be using their voices
to speak out against this.
But open carry,
listen, right now,
because law enforcement is speaking out against it,
it is currently going to be tabled.
We saw what happened this week.
One of the house members put it out there in an amendment
on the bill that's gonna be on the floor today
and quickly pulled it off.
My hope is it won't happen that they will move on and call
what's gonna happen now with purposeless carry enough.
But these people, they're not gonna quit,
they're not gonna stop
and Florida's gonna be more dangerous and deadly
because of them.
>>Well, there's also
the third thing they've been talking about
is reducing the age.
One of the major steps that Florida took
in the wake of Parkland
was to raise the age in which you can buy a gun
from 18 to 21.
And there's a lot of talk about moving it from 21 to 18.
Again, I go back to that interview
that I did with the current house speaker Paul Renner.
He seems fine with the idea of lowering it from 21 to 18.
His belief is that,
he told me outright that he would support that
because he said that when Democrats
had both The House, the Senate,
and the White House just recently
and passed their gun legislation,
which I know you helped advocate for,
they didn't raise the age from 18 to 21.
So, as he said, these are words he used.
"If the Democrats didn't wanna raise it nationally to 21,
why should Florida 18, 19, and 20 year olds be penalized?
Why shouldn't it go back to 18?"
How would you respond to him?
>>Renner is an idiot.
That's how I'll respond to him.
And that's just a dumb response.
Because he fully knows how politics works.
And in fact, while the legislation passed in DC
made it harder for those under 21 to get weapons,
it didn't change the age
because that was what had to happen
in order to get any Republicans to join in
in a bipartisan way.
Okay?
That decision was made in order to get a bipartisan bill,
which what you can debate
whether or not that was a good idea.
The only reason the age wasn't raised to 21
is because there's two limited Republicans
who simply will oppose it,
who won't put the safety of Floridians, Americans
and all of us first
>>By the way, let me just sort of jump in.
Renner voted for the raising the age from 18 to 21.
>>Well, that was gonna be point number two
and why I called him an idiot and he is an idiot.
And he's got all in on the red meat.
It is what it is.
Listen, this week, they are holding hearings
on raising the age to 21.
>>From 21 to 18.
>>I'm sorry, 21 to 18. Yeah.
Last week, the United States Appeals Court
upheld a ruling on the age
because the NRA sued the state of Florida
to bring it back down to remove that part of the legislation
and the appeals court sided with the state on this one
and keeping the age of 21
and found plenty of historical precedent in doing so.
So, those who oppose it are simply wrong.
Raising the age 21 has saved lives in Florida
and it was the right thing to do.
>>When we come back,
we sit down with the new chairman
of the Republican Party of Florida, Christian Ziegler.