Florida woman seeks to keep anonymity in NRA lawsuit

Saying she fears for her safety, a young woman who wants to join the National Rifle Association’s challenge to a new Florida law that made it illegal to sell guns to anyone under age 21 is asking a federal court to keep her identity secret.

In court filings seeking a federal judge’s permission to proceed with the pseudonym “Jane Doe” for the woman, the NRA relied heavily on a sworn statement by the group's Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, who said she has received “scores” of threatening phone calls and emails following a February mass shooting at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 14 students and three faculty members dead.

“After news of the Parkland shooting broke, I received numerous harassing emails and phone calls threatening my life and physical well-being. Those threats continue to this day,” Hammer wrote in a statement filed Thursday.

According to Hammer’s declaration, the 79-year-old great-grandmother has received “scores of threatening and harassing phone calls from individuals who have used offensive and derogatory language” and made threats on her life.

Several of the dozen messages, from senders whose identification was blacked out in the court documents, featured derogatory words for parts of the female anatomy.

Another warned Hammer, “there is a special place in hell for nasty old rednecks like yourself.”

The unidentified sender concluded: “Blood on your hands. You’re going down.”

On March 10, another critic called Hammer “a dyspeptic nasty old bag” whose “extremist ideology is getting a lot of people killed.”