A Facebook page hyping a “big announcement” from Gov. Rick Scott was filled with encouragement for a challenge against U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, but a stream of anger ran through the comments.
"Sorry, Governor Scott. You blew it when you signed the anti-gun legislation into law. Will not be voting for you,” one person wrote. Another compared him to Democrat Charlie Crist. A third fumed, “Shouldn’t have gone against Americans with your knee jerk pandering to the gun grabbers.”
Scott’s embrace of Florida’s first gun restrictions in decades has infuriated the gun lobby and its fiercely loyal lieutenants.
Now the National Rifle Association, already on the defensive in Washington and across the country, faces a conundrum in a nationally watched election that could decide the balance of power in the Senate: Let Scott slide or punish a governor who achieved the group’s A-plus rating?
If Scott escapes attacks after weakening gun rights, other Republicans may feel emboldened in a time of soaring public support for solutions to Parkland and other mass shootings.
“It has always been our practice to hold public officials accountable for their actions that impact law-abiding firearms owners and their Second Amendment rights. Nothing has changed,” said Marion Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist who, pre-Parkland, had achieved a legendary reputation for her control over the agenda in Tallahassee.
Hammer declined to comment further.
NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer returns to her seat after speaking in the Senate Rules Committee meeting on gun safety in the Knott Building at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Feb
