The office of none other than Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an opinion earlier this month that puts the council in the clear if it wants to pass a resolution suggesting that maybe sometimes people die from guns, and maybe state lawmakers should one day talk about how to make dying from guns less of a thing.
In the wake of last June's mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Wheeler-Bowman suggested the council pass a resolution to support the League of Women Voters' call on state lawmakers to have a special session in which they could talk about ways to keep automatic weapons out of the hands of people who might use them to kill other people — an idea the NRA, a generous benefactor to many lawmakers, abhors.
A city attorney advised her against doing so, citing state legislation barring city and county governments from doing anything that would limit the proliferation of guns in city parks or wherever, and a 2011 law imposing legal consequences and even possible removal from office if a local elected official even tries. So Wheeler-Bowman, who herself lost her son, Cabretti, to gun violence in 2008, withdrew the resolution.
But since the resolution simply expresses a shared viewpoint and "would not deny, impair or interfere in any way with the right to bear arms, or the Legislature's regulation of such right," the AG's office concluded, those who support it would "not be subject to penalties."
In a press release issued Tuesday, Wheeler-Bowman applauded the opinion, and called on the council to make a statement about gun violence.
“I’m hoping my colleagues in St. Petersburg and around the state in local government will join me. We don’t have to be afraid anymore. We can speak out and work to make our neighborhoods safer for every family,” she said.
She lamented the climate of fear that keeps officials at the city and county levels from passing laws aimed at protecting the community — laws are at odds with monied interests that push state laws.
“It’s sad that it took a legal opinion from Florida’s Attorney General before I could talk about the murder of my son, Cabretti Wheeler, and how to make sure this doesn’t happen to other families,” Wheeler-Bowman said. “As a mother, a gun owner, and a representative of my community, I’ll be encouraging my colleagues to discuss this issue openly so we can work to make our streets safer for every family.”
The local gun law ban speaks to a bigger issue in Florida, where the legislature often uses state statutes to tie the hands of cities and counties on everything from fertilizer and styrofoam bans to low-wage worker protections. Often, local elected officials are finding themselves racing against the clock to pass community-supported ordinances as lawmakers try to sneak measures into state laws — sometimes as amendments to totally unrelated bills — that would make said ordinances illegal.
But cities may be trying to fight back.
Last month, as Wheeler-Bowman notes in her press release, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum formed the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, a coalition of individuals, organizations, and officials to push back against state preemption of local laws, like gun safety ordinances.
This article appears in Feb 9-16, 2017.