Once upon a time in Florida, a Republican couple went to see their doctor who asked them whether they had any guns in their house. They refused to answer, and were upset by the doctor’s concern for their safety. Within short order, the Florida legislature passed a bill barring doctors and healthcare professionals from asking patients background questions about firearms. Rick Scott signed the “Docs vs. Glocks” bill with some fanfare. The 11th circuit court of appeals struck down the law last year, after it had been on the books for six years.
How did such a ridiculous law get passed? How did it get through Republican legislators who will talk your ear off about “free speech” and insist that “mental health” is the key to preventing mass-shootings? Well, one answer is that they’re hypocrites.
But, another, equally important reason is, Marion Hammer.
Who? You ask? Hammer is a Florida gun lobbyist and former president of the pro-massacre NRA. She has helped push through most of the insane gun laws that Florida pioneered. She helped pass Florida’s 1987 concealed carry law which directed state officials to issue permits to anyone over the age of 21. This law superseded local laws that in many cases were far more restrictive. Hammer is the force behind Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law which is designed to maximize the number of random arguments that turn into gun-fights. This is the law that let Trayvon Martin’s killer play out his racist vigilante fantasy to deadly effect, and walk away without serving a day in prison.
In 2011 Republicans, influenced by Hammer, passed a law that made municipal and local officials subject to fines and dismissal if they passed gun laws more restrictive than the state. This merely underscored the degree of control Hammer has exercised over Florida’s spineless elected officials for decades.
The Trace received a cache of e-mails that reveal Hammer’s outsized influence in the Florida legislature, and specifically in the Florida Republican party, via public-records requests. In many cases, she is on the record as directing state officials and legislative aides, despite the fact that she holds no government position.
In March 2013, an 8-year-old Maryland boy was suspended from his elementary school after he chewed a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot his classmates. Five months later, in September, Hammer set about crafting a bill that would prohibit schools from disciplining students who play with pretend guns.
Emails show Hammer, over the course of several days, working on the legislation’s language with a staff lawyer from the Florida House of Representatives. Notably, no lawmakers are ever copied on the correspondence, nor is there any indication in the the documents that any elected officials are involved in the drafting process — the legislation did not yet have a formal sponsor. Four months later, in February 2014, Dennis Baxley, who was then a state representative, finally introduces Hammer’s proposal as a bill.
In 2014 and 2015, when Matt Gaetz was a state representative, and his father, Don, was a state senator, they worked closely with Hammer to facilitate the passage of a bill to allow people to openly carry handguns in public.
The trio discussed how to pressure certain elected officials. A separate message addressed the lobbyist’s concerns that she might be kept out of a meeting involving law enforcement, with Don Gaetz assuring Hammer, “There will be no meeting that involves me with law enforcement on this bill without you.” In another email, Don celebrates the camaraderie between the lawmakers and lobbyist. “This will be the fight of the year,” he said. “We’re a pretty good three-person team.”
— www.thetrace.org/...
Last month, Mike Spies, the trace journalist, published a long profile of Hammer in the New Yorker. It is definitely worth reading, especially the section that describes how Hammer tried to get the general counsel for Florida’s Department of Military Affairs fired because she didn’t like his testimony during a legislative hearing. This was just one example of the influence she holds over government officials, elected and unelected, in Florda:
In a recent book, “Engines of Liberty,” David Cole, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, devoted an admiring chapter to Hammer and the N.R.A. As recently as 1988, Cole notes, a federal court maintained that “for at least 100 years [courts] have analyzed the second amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias, rather than individual rights.” The subsequent shift toward individual rights can be traced back to Hammer. “Florida is often the first place the N.R.A. pursues specific gun rights protections,” Cole explains, “relying on Hammer and her supporters to set a precedent that can then be exported to other states.”
This strategy is far more effective than trying to overhaul federal laws, a complicated process that draws the scrutiny of the national media. Since 1998, Republicans have had total control over Florida’s legislature. In that time, the state has enacted some thirty of Hammer’s bills. “Democrats don’t have anything close to combat her,” Moskowitz told me. In the executive and legislative branches, Republicans have been eager to work with her. Steve Crisafulli, a Republican who, between 2014 and 2016, served as the House speaker, said, “Members will go to Marion. They’ll say, ‘I want to carry a bill for the N.R.A. this year. What are you working on? What are your priorities?’ ” [...]
Greg Evers, a former Republican state senator who, before he died last August, worked closely with Hammer, estimated that her e-mails reach “two or three million” people. Florida has issued around 1.8 million concealed-carry permits, by far the most in the country, and there are 4.6 million registered Republican voters in the state. “The number of fanatical supporters who will take her word for anything and can be deployed almost at will is unique,” Stipanovich, the strategist and lobbyist, told me. For many Republicans, her support tends to be perceived as the difference between winning and losing.
— www.newyorker.com/...
— @subirgrewal