A buddy of mine lives in Miami and works for Taurus.  He informed me about this.

There are two petitions to amend the Florida Constitution to be strictly anti-gun.

The first is from a group based out of Miami called Ban Assault Weapons Now.  Below is the relevant text of their petition.

(c) The legislature shall enact legislation implementing subsection (b) of this section, effective no later than December 31, 1991, which shall provide that anyone violating the provisions of subsection (b) shall be guilty of a felony.
(d) This restriction shall not apply to a trade in of another handgun.
(e) The possession of an assault weapon, as that term is defined in this subsection, is prohibited in Florida except as provided in this subsection. This subsection shall be construed in conformity with the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court.
1) Definitions –
a) Assault Weapons – For purposes of this subsection, any semiautomatic rifle or shotgun capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in a fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition feeding
device. This subsection does not apply to handguns.
b) Semiautomatic – For purposes of this subsection, any weapon which fires a single projectile or a number of ball shots through a rifled or smooth bore for each single function of the trigger without further manual action required.
c) Ammunition-feeding device – For purposes of this subsection, any magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device for a firearm.
2) Limitations –
a) This subsection shall not apply to military or law enforcement use, or use by federal personnel, in conduct of their duties, or to an assault weapon being imported for sale and delivery to a federal, state or local governmental agency for use by employees of such agencies to perform official duties
b) This subsection does not apply to any firearm that is not semiautomatic, as defined in this subsection.
c) This subsection does not apply to handguns, as defined in Article I, Section 8(b), Florida Constitution.
d) If a person had lawful possession of an assault weapon prior to the effective date of this subsection, the person’s possession of that assault weapon is not unlawful (1) during the first year after the effective date of this subsection, or (2), after the person has registered that weapon by make, model, and serial number with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or its successor agency, as designated by the legislature. Registration records shall be available to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies for valid law enforcement purposes but shall otherwise be confidential.
3) Criminal Penalties – Violation of this subsection is a third-degree felony. The legislature may designate greater, but not lesser, penalties for violations.

This ballot measure would ban the sale and possession of all semi-auto rifles that hold more than 10 rounds, except for those owned before the amendment went into effect and registered within a year of passing of the amendment.

Failure to comply is a felony and makes you a prohibited person.

My favorite part of this petition is this right here: “This subsection shall be construed in conformity with the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled on the constitutionality of assault rifles.  Heller protected guns “in common use” but the 9th and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals have ruled that the most popular rifle sold in America is not “in common use” enough to be protected by Heller.

This petition is begging for the Supreme Court to rule on this.

Believe it or not, that is the more milder of the two petitions.

The second petition is put forward by a group called Stop the Killing based in Boca Raton.  You can find the whole text here.

This ballot initiate starts by wiping this from the current Florida Constitution: Section 8,(a) The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed, except that the manner of bearing arms may be regulated by law. 

Seriously, this petition wants to remove the right to bear arms and the right to self defense from the Florida Constitution.

Here is the rest of the text of what they want to add.

The people of Florida declare that a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of the State and further designate the National Guard of the State of Florida and organized police forces as its militia. The Militia, while on active duty, while training or in their training facilities shall possess all types of weaponry and arms required to defend the State. The weapons shall include, but not limited to fully automatic weapons, assault weapons, large magazine weapons holding more than seven rounds of ammunition and magazines with capacity over seven rounds. No other person entering or residing in the State shall possess any weapon or firearm that functions like or has the capacity of a military style weapon. Military style weapon means any gun with a magazine capacity of more than seven rounds of ammunition or any weapon capable of firing in fully automatic mode, any weapon capable of being modified in any manner to fire in a fully automatic mode or any weapon classified as a sniper rifle. Any person other than the well-regulated militia who possesses such a gun or weapon, shall within one year of the enactment of this section
surrender that gun or weapon to the local police or militia at which time that gun or weapon shall be destroyed. Possessing such a gun or weapon thereafter shall be a felony with punishment by up to one year in prison.
Further, to protect the population of the state no person shall possess a firearm of any kind if:
1) they have been convicted of a felony;
2) convicted of three or more misdemeanors;
3) had their drivers license suspended or revoked for driving under the influence, careless or reckless driving, or excessive speeding;
4) has been the subject of two or more domestic abuse emergency calls or investigations;
5) they are a person whose mental condition has been affirmed as temporarily or permanently psychologically disturbed by a person with a medical degree;
6) or if they are a person who has made any substantiated threat of violence against another person.

This is effectively a ban on the majority of guns.

Military style weapon means any gun with a magazine capacity of more than seven rounds of ammunition or any weapon capable of firing in fully automatic mode, any weapon capable of being modified in any manner to fire in a fully automatic mode or any weapon classified as a sniper rifle.

All guns with a magazine capacity of more than seven rounds is nearly every semi-auto handgun, and depending on which definition you use, a lot of rim fire revolvers.  Just about every magazine fed 22 or pistol caliber lever action rifle is out.

Then they don’t define sniper rifle, so presumably that is going to cover every bolt action rifle with a scope on it.

Then they get into what makes a person a prohibited person.

2) convicted of three or more misdemeanors.

Not violent misdemeanors, just misdemeanors.  That includes things like ticket scalping, lewdness, vandalism, and writing bad checks.  Sure those are crimes, but are they justification for revocation of civil liberties.  How does this apply to juvenile offenders.  Does a dumb teenager who spray paints a dick on an overpass become a prohibited person?

Yes, we need to keep guns out of the hands of kids like Nikolas Cruz, but we have to recognize that kids do dumb things and a teenager having a beer at a high school party and playing music too loud shouldn’t result in a lifetime ban on firearms possession.

3) had their drivers license suspended or revoked for driving under the influence, careless or reckless driving, or excessive speeding.

Yep, excessive speeding.  That is defined as doing more than 30 over the limit.

That sounds bad until you’ve driven on I-95 through North Date where the posted limit is 55 and everybody does 80 (Miguel, back me up on how fast people blow through the Golden Glades Interchange).

5) they are a person whose mental condition has been affirmed as temporarily or permanently psychologically disturbed by a person with a medical degree

Not adjudicated mentally ill.  Just had a person with a medical degree affirm that they are temporarily psychologically disturbed.  Did you go through a bout of depression after a divorce, job loss, or personal tragedy?  You are now a prohibited person for life.

All this is going to do is make gun owners not seek any sort of help for any issue because they will be afraid they will lose their guns.

This prohibition is so extreme that there is no way it could stand up to judicial scrutiny, but it is still being pushed.

This is all Rick Scott’s fault.  He waffled on gun rights immediately after Parkland and since he gave the anti-gunners an inch, they are going to take the whole mile.

These ballot initiates will require 76,000 signatures to get on the ballot and 60% approval to pass.

That is where we are fucked.  Remember when the NRA challenged the Washington ballot anti-gun initiative for having illegitimate ballot signatures?  The state Supreme Court put the petition on the ballot anyway.

I can only image the level of cheating that Dade, Broward, and other blue county Democrats are going to do to make sure these bills make their way onto the ballot in 2020 and get passed.

This is what Florida is up against for the next two years.