Take, for instance, Senate Bill 296.
Terrence Gorman, general counsel for the Department of Military Affairs and a staff attorney for the Florida National Guard stationed in St. Augustine, had just given testimony during a Senate committee hearing critical of a bill Hammer supports.,,,,
….The legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, allows someone who is required to evacuate during an emergency like a hurricane to keep a gun on them even if they don’t have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
The National Guard responds to those types of emergencies.
People without proper training shouldn’t have weapons in those high-stress situations, Gorman told the committee last week.
NRA lobbyist’s protest to Rick Scott’s office leads to reversal letter
I know it has been 21 years after Hurricane Andrew and 8 years after Hurricane Katrina, but you cannot tell me that the lessons have been lost already. The stories of people evacuating the NOLA area via car, being stopped by police and having their weapons confiscated and destroyed are well documented in places like the book The Great New Orleans Gun Grab by Gordon Hutchinson & Todd Masson. Somehow it seems that leaving people at the mercy of luck makes more sense than allowing them to defend themselves from the criminal element that prey on situations like that.
But what is really funny is that the National Guard is protesting this bill. Let’s not forget that after Andrew, they sent Guardsmen to “safeguard” the Homestead area…without ammunition in their rifles. I have heard tales of Guardsmen being robbed by criminals with boolits in their guns and leaving them pretty much naked and their superiors having to explain the idiocy of sending disarmed people out there.
If that is what qualifies as “responding to that type of emergencies” I do want that bill passed A.S.A.P.
Sounds like I owe my state senator, Thad Altman, a thank you, too. And God bless Marion Hammer.
I was sent to Homestead/Kendall after Andrew (in an LEO capacity) and if I remember correctly the FL Guard did have ammo in their 16’s but the 82nd Airborne didn’t. Several of the 82nd 16’s got liberated at gun point by the natives. The thugs KNEW that the Guard was loaded and left them alone!
On another note, the 82nd’s XO got busted for driving around in a golf cart that was stolen from the Border Patrol. It seems that the Midnight Supply Room acquired the golf cart and put 82nd insignia stickers OVER the Border Patrol emblems on the cart. Ooopsie.
[…] 296 is apparently stalled. As I posted before, it allows for people even without a Concealed Weapons Permit to carry a gun during an evacuation […]
Let’s look at this another way — if people evacuating shouldn’t have firearms; doesn’t that mean there will be thousands of abandoned homes with firearms left inside?
in an area where those firearms could end up unsecured due to the houses being destroyed?
Or stolen by looters before or after the storm hits?
How does that make any sense?
Bob S.
3 Boxes of BS.
and you may have a point…