Home
By Mike Spies, The New Yorker
26 February 18
Marion Hammer’s unique influence over legislators has produced laws that dramatically alter long-held American norms.
"Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, was debating tax policy on the chamber floor, in Tallahassee, last week, when he received a call from his wife, Leah. He was surprised to hear her crying. She was trying to pick up their four-year-old son, Sam, who attends a preschool in Moskowitz’s district, which encompasses two affluent communities about an hour north of Miami—Parkland and Coral Springs. Leah had seen a number of police officers outside the building. Moskowitz called the local sheriff’s office and learned that the preschool was on lockdown, because there was an active shooter at the nearby Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Moskowitz, who graduated from Douglas in 1999, called Leah back, then walked over to Richard Corcoran, the speaker of the House, and explained that he had to leave. “I think people were still getting killed while we were talking,” Moskowitz told me.
Parkland is almost five hundred miles south of Tallahassee; by the time Moskowitz’s flight landed, he knew that nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who had been expelled from Douglas, had used a legally purchased AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to kill seventeen students and staff members and seriously wound more than a dozen others. Moskowitz drove to the Marriott Hotel in Coral Springs, a few minutes from Douglas. Law-enforcement officials had directed parents and family members of missing children to a ballroom there.
Some mothers and fathers were praying; others grew exasperated. “Just tell me!” one parent yelled at the F.B.I. agents and the police officers who were in the room. “Is he in the school?” After midnight, officials began to take families to an adjoining room, one at a time, where they were told whether their child was dead or in the hospital. “You could hear them screaming through the wall,” Moskowitz recalled.
Two days later, I joined Moskowitz on Coral Springs Drive, which runs alongside Douglas. The area was closed to traffic, and cordoned off by a length of police tape. TV-news reporters had camped out there, and Douglas students walked among them, placing flowers on an improvised memorial and demanding that lawmakers pass new gun-safety laws. One student, a solemn seventeen-year-old named Demitri Hoth, shared footage on his phone of his classmates just after the shooting. They were walking single file down Coral Springs Drive, with their hands over their heads. “I wanted to show the American public the true failure of our politicians,” Hoth said. “We all lost something—our friends, our loved ones, our security, our innocence.”
On the other side of the tape, public officials congregated. Normally, Moskowitz moves with the jumpy energy of a Hollywood agent, but now he was subdued. He wore a charcoal suit, and his hazel eyes were raw and red-rimmed. He had come from the funeral of Meadow Pollack, a senior at Douglas.
Moskowitz shook hands with Dan Daley, a young city commissioner in Coral Springs. “I was talking to one of the Douglas students,” Daley said. “His only words to me were ‘Do something.’ I had to tell him that I legally can’t do anything, because the governor could take away my job if I tried.”
Moskowitz turned to me. “That’s the legacy of Marion Hammer,” he said.
Hammer is the National Rifle Association’s Florida lobbyist. At seventy-eight years old, she is nearing four decades as the most influential gun lobbyist in the United States. Her policies have elevated Florida’s gun owners to a uniquely privileged status, and made the public carrying of firearms a fact of daily life in the state. Daley was referring to a law that Hammer worked to enact in 2011, during Governor Rick Scott’s first year in office. The statute punishes local officials who attempt to establish gun regulations stricter than those imposed at the state level. Officials can be fined thousands of dollars and removed from office..."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/48670-the-nra-lobbyist-behind-floridas-pro-gun-policies
26 February 18
Marion Hammer’s unique influence over legislators has produced laws that dramatically alter long-held American norms.
"Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, was debating tax policy on the chamber floor, in Tallahassee, last week, when he received a call from his wife, Leah. He was surprised to hear her crying. She was trying to pick up their four-year-old son, Sam, who attends a preschool in Moskowitz’s district, which encompasses two affluent communities about an hour north of Miami—Parkland and Coral Springs. Leah had seen a number of police officers outside the building. Moskowitz called the local sheriff’s office and learned that the preschool was on lockdown, because there was an active shooter at the nearby Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Moskowitz, who graduated from Douglas in 1999, called Leah back, then walked over to Richard Corcoran, the speaker of the House, and explained that he had to leave. “I think people were still getting killed while we were talking,” Moskowitz told me.
Parkland is almost five hundred miles south of Tallahassee; by the time Moskowitz’s flight landed, he knew that nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who had been expelled from Douglas, had used a legally purchased AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to kill seventeen students and staff members and seriously wound more than a dozen others. Moskowitz drove to the Marriott Hotel in Coral Springs, a few minutes from Douglas. Law-enforcement officials had directed parents and family members of missing children to a ballroom there.
Some mothers and fathers were praying; others grew exasperated. “Just tell me!” one parent yelled at the F.B.I. agents and the police officers who were in the room. “Is he in the school?” After midnight, officials began to take families to an adjoining room, one at a time, where they were told whether their child was dead or in the hospital. “You could hear them screaming through the wall,” Moskowitz recalled.
Two days later, I joined Moskowitz on Coral Springs Drive, which runs alongside Douglas. The area was closed to traffic, and cordoned off by a length of police tape. TV-news reporters had camped out there, and Douglas students walked among them, placing flowers on an improvised memorial and demanding that lawmakers pass new gun-safety laws. One student, a solemn seventeen-year-old named Demitri Hoth, shared footage on his phone of his classmates just after the shooting. They were walking single file down Coral Springs Drive, with their hands over their heads. “I wanted to show the American public the true failure of our politicians,” Hoth said. “We all lost something—our friends, our loved ones, our security, our innocence.”
On the other side of the tape, public officials congregated. Normally, Moskowitz moves with the jumpy energy of a Hollywood agent, but now he was subdued. He wore a charcoal suit, and his hazel eyes were raw and red-rimmed. He had come from the funeral of Meadow Pollack, a senior at Douglas.
Moskowitz shook hands with Dan Daley, a young city commissioner in Coral Springs. “I was talking to one of the Douglas students,” Daley said. “His only words to me were ‘Do something.’ I had to tell him that I legally can’t do anything, because the governor could take away my job if I tried.”
Moskowitz turned to me. “That’s the legacy of Marion Hammer,” he said.
Hammer is the National Rifle Association’s Florida lobbyist. At seventy-eight years old, she is nearing four decades as the most influential gun lobbyist in the United States. Her policies have elevated Florida’s gun owners to a uniquely privileged status, and made the public carrying of firearms a fact of daily life in the state. Daley was referring to a law that Hammer worked to enact in 2011, during Governor Rick Scott’s first year in office. The statute punishes local officials who attempt to establish gun regulations stricter than those imposed at the state level. Officials can be fined thousands of dollars and removed from office..."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/48670-the-nra-lobbyist-behind-floridas-pro-gun-policies
