What troubles me about this proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment is not the content itself, but the blatant dishonesty being used to sell it

Above is a link to a description of the measure at BallotPedia.

This proposed amendment is currently in the signature gathering stage. 766,200 valid signatures must be certified by February 1, 2020, for the amendment to appear on the Florida November General Election ballot.

I will start by quoting the actual amendment.

(a) The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed, except that the manner of bearing arms may be regulated by law.

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.

The provisions of this section are self-implementing and are immediately in effect upon adoption.

They certainly aren’t being subtle. They propose to strip the right to keep and bear arms entirely from the Florida Constitution.

The militia clause is unconstitutional on its face, only Congress can define the membership of the militia and have done so by law. No State can contradict Congress by redefining the membership of the militia.

The “military style weapons” clause is deliberately written so vaguely that literally ANY firearm can be defined as a military style weapon and banned for civilian use.

The section defining those categories of persons who can’t possess weapons violates due process in so many ways it is impossible to count. Many domestic abuse calls are merely harassment by a partner and not genuine, yet only two CALLS is sufficient to disarm a person, even if they are innocent of wrongdoing.

This is about as blatant an attempt at 100% gun confiscation as I have ever seen. Even the **** heads in the big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles haven’t tried crap like this.

Now lets see how they are selling it to the gullible fools.

BALLOT TITLE

Well Regulated Militia and Firearms - Stop the Killing

Nice innocuous sounding title.

BALLOT SUMMARY

This Amendment recognizes the Florida National Guard and other organized police forces as the well-regulated militia of the State and authorizes them to keep and use military style weapons. Possession of military style weapons is prohibited except for the militia. Other persons convicted of various types of crimes or investigated for abuses are also prohibited from possessing guns or firearms.

Not a ******* word about removing RKBA from the Constitution and it dishonestly makes the rest of the amendment sound far less draconian than what it actually is.

Completely dishonest and they know full and well very few people actually will bother to look up and read the actual text of the amendment.

The people responsible for this are dirt-bags and scum. NOT because of the content of the amendment itself. But entirely because of their dishonesty in presenting it.

They know that even people who support moderate gun control are not going to support this turd of an amendment. So they find it necessary to use trickery and deceit.

If your going to present this, then present an honest ballot title and an honest ballot summary. Had they done so, I would not have even made this thread. This thread is not about the content of the amendment itself, bad as it is. It is entirely about the dishonesty used to promote it.

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In Florida, who makes the title of ballot propositions, the proponents or the Secretary of State?

Yes, to all of your points about sneakiness, but one 30 second commercial by the opponents would blow the cover off of that.

My reading is that the proponents are more fanatic than they are duplicitous. If sneaking something past the electorate was their goal, they could have done a much better job of it.

Ballot title and summary is made by the proponents. Supreme Court can require them to modify it if they feel it is misleading, which it obviously is.

But just TRYING to pass that ballot summary off as is is terrible.

I would make another tangentially related point.

Putting ANY gun control measure on the ballot is not bright in a Presidential Election. It will galvanize Trump’s base to come out and vote.

Not bright at all by the gun control people.

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As I said, fanatics.

They need to do something more than thoughts and prayers. It may be the wrong thing at the wrong election, but they have to do something.

They aren’t being subtle about it. I do appreciate that the language is clear simple english. Once you get past the militia stuff, its very straightforward. None of the “it will do this” / “no it will do that” battling commercials.

Here is another initiative circulating in Florida. While I oppose it also, at least these people are being honest about what they are presenting.

If you are a Floridian and feel the need to support gun control, at least make sure it is THIS one you are signing. They are at least honest.

You expect them to be honest about it being blatantly unconstitutional in numerous ways? Please vote for this and watch it get struck down before it goes into effect, isn’t exactly a catchy amendment description.

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Go for it, Florida Man. Great timing! :rofl:

If this isn’t government attempting to “infringe”, I don’t know what is? This is a blatant INFRINGEMENT.

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Let’s hope not.

None of them will be honest when it comes time to vote, including the wording on the ballot. Past initiatives bear this out too. Pretty sure you had a thread about that very thing here in the 2016 election. The wording on the ballots is unnecessarily vague and/or confusing and the ads by the opposing sides during the lead up to the election amount to blatant lies half the time.

Classified as a sniper rifle by who? Capable of being modified into an automatic? That includes just about any semi-automatic weapon. You list restrictions on weapons people can own and then say restricting the shooter not the weapon is NRA approved?

What? Does it say that in the proposed amendment? And if it does, that’s pretty stupid, since all the manufacturer would have to do is stop calling it a sniper rifle. And what manufacturer currently sells a gun they call a sniper rifle? I’d like to see that advertisement.

It doesn’t say can be easily modified, it says can be modified.

Still waiting to see those manufacturers calling their guns sniper rifles.

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Any bolt action deer rifle can then be considered a sniper rifle. But we know that’s what the left wants, firearms banned by any means possible.

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Good point.

“Organized police forces” a militia?

Exempts military and law enforcement personnel in their official duties.

And there we go.

Warms my heart to see a corporate lawyer so concerned about deceptive practices. :smile:

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Ok, good.

  1. Marketing to military and police, no foul.
  2. Can’t find the word sniper on the page
  3. Ditto
  4. Military and police again
  5. Ditto
  6. Again

So that’s a fail, the goal was to find manufacturers advertising rifles as sniper rifles to be sold to the general public. Not the military or police.