But they were there, on the USF St. Pete campus, to headline a press conference with a heavy agenda.
Willis, a Parkland father, said that his son, an eighth grader, had played basketball on Feb. 11 with two ninth-grader friends who would lose their lives three days later in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. So he was hoping Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission, a panel that meets every 20 years to weigh new proposals for the state constitution, would listen to him and his neighbors.
“We had watched our children and our teachers get slaughtered by an AR-15, and unfortunately some of the videos that we’ve seen, you’ve never even seen on television,” he said ahead of a marathon CRC meeting in a cavernous room at USF St. Pete’s Student Center. “We’ve cried on the buses coming to Tallahassee. We cried this morning on the way up here. Our hearts are broken.”
The item that Willis and his allies had come to advocate — an assault-style weapons ban and other safety measures — had just been added to the list of potential amendments for the CRC to consider. In addition to the gun proposal, the press conference, organized by the League of Women Voters and other groups, aimed to highlight the “Terrible Ten.” Those are 10 proposed constitutional amendments that do things like limit privacy rights for Floridians for the sake of chipping away at abortion rights (Proposal 22) and promote charter schools at the expense of the public education system. Happening nearly simultaneously inside the building was a press conference promoting Proposal 91, which would permanently ban offshore drilling in state waters.
Willis said he was happy the state had passed some reforms — a package deal that aimed to boost school safety, raise the minimum age for buying guns from 18 to 21 and ban “bump stocks.” But talking to Republican state lawmakers about banning assault-style guns like the one used to kill his son’s friends, he said, was like talking to a wall.
“Our kids are not asking to do away with the Second Amendment,” Willis said. “They’re not asking to take away people’s guns or their ability to hunt. What they’re saying is that these weapons of mass destruction that do nothing but tear human beings apart in an unbelievable way, that killed our kids and our teachers and our coaches, do not belong in civilian hands. They’re only for police and military. And please don’t tell us that you need to go target shooting, or you need them to defend yourself from the United States of America. Because, quite frankly, as our kids have said over and over, and to quote Emma [the now-famous Parkland student Emma Gonzalez], ‘It’s just B.S.’”
Like Willis, most of the people who packed the house in favor of one or more of the dozens of constitutional amendments up for consideration were there because of a disconnect between themselves and a majority of state lawmakers. Most of the bills the legislature passes reflect the will of donors and lobbyists, they say, not most Floridians.
CRC members are appointees of the most powerful people in the state — Gov. Rick Scott, House Speaker Richard Corcoran, Senate President Joe Negron and Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge LaBarga. They’re charged with deciding what goes before Floridians on the November ballot.
The panel got an earful on a ton of issues during the USF St. Pete hearing, which stretched from early afternoon well into Tuesday evening.
Those who were in favor of an amendment a given speaker addressed waved green cards and placards. Those who disagreed raised red cards and in some cases signs.
Among the most contentious was the issue of greyhound racing. Animal welfare advocates came out in full force to push for a ban on such races, which are significantly more prominent in Florida than in any other state (the state has 12 of the nation's 18 tracks). Proposal 67 would phase the practice out. Those in favor cited the welfare of the dogs and the failure of regulators to keep them safe from dangerous measures like feeding them cocaine to enhance performances. Opponents of the amendment, all somehow employed by the industry, raised concerns over the economic implications of such a policy.
The CRC is expected to decide this spring which proposals will make it onto the ballot — and only a small fraction are expected to succeed.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2018.
