<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/florida-house-bill-would-allow-carrying-guns-without-a-permit-during-riots/2174397">http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/florida-house-bill-would-allow-carrying-guns-without-a-permit-during-riots/2174397</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: 'Francois One', sans-serif; font-size: 1.929em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(24, 24, 24);"><span class="entry-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;">Florida House bill would allow carrying guns without a permit during riots</span></h1></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TALLAHASSEE — Under a bill backed by the National Rifle Association and other gun groups, riots could be the newest safe haven for those carrying firearms without a permit.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">HB 209, which is expected to be voted on Friday by the Florida House, would allow people with clean criminal backgrounds to conceal firearms without a permit during emergencies — including riots and civil unrest like the 1996 racial disturbances that rocked St. Petersburg — declared by the governor or local officials.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"To allow people to go into a riot while concealing a gun without a permit is the definition of insanity," said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. "The bill is crazy. It's absurd."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Supporters of the bill say it's intended to give gun owners the opportunity to protect their property while they are evacuating from a disaster or crisis, such as hurricanes, floods or worse.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We tell people to be prepared during hurricane season to take care of yourself for three days," Florida Carry general counsel Eric Friday said earlier this month. "That means food, water, and also the ability to protect yourself because emergency services aren't available."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Those concealing a firearm without a permit can be punished with up to five years in prison for the third-degree felony. Under the proposed legislation, that penalty could be waived during emergencies.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gualtieri and the Florida Sheriffs Association have been lobbying for weeks to make changes, pitting them against the sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg. That's SB 296.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A key objection is that it's not clear in the legislation when it's okay not to have a permit for the concealed firearm. Both bills say no permit is needed for those "in the act of complying with a mandatory evacuation order during a declared state of emergency."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If someone flees a hurricane and travels several counties over, either to a hotel or relative's house, at what point are they still evacuating? For how long are they able to claim they are evacuating?</span></p></div><div><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Wednesday, the House sponsor, Rep. Heather Fitzenhagen, R-Fort Myers, couldn't provide specifics to the doubters during House debate on the bill.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"I have (the gun) on my body because I'm allowed to do it under this new law, and I get to a (hurricane) shelter," Rep. Elaine Schwartz, D-Hollywood, asked Fitzenhagen. "What happens to the firearm then?"</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The law does not allow you to bring that into a shelter," Fitzenhagen replied. "You would be able to put it somewhere else, in another person's car perhaps, or a container."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Florida Sheriffs Association thinks the bill is too vague and would lead to false arrests and clashes with police. Brandes and Fitzenhagen say too much specificity would defeat the purpose of the bill.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"If you refine it too much, then you don't make it effective for giving people the opportunity to store their guns safely," she said.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For Gualtieri and the Florida Sheriffs Association, the bills were made considerably worse in late March and early April when they were amended so that local authorities, not just the governor, could declare an emergency.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Under that added provision, riots qualified as emergencies in which residents could conceal guns without permits.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"We were trying to work with them, but they changed the purpose of the bill," Gualtieri said. "Now you don't have to be leaving an area. You could be coming to it, you could be part of the problem, exacerbating it."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Tuesday, the Senate's Community Affairs Committee agreed, stripping out the local emergency provision that included riots.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But it remains in the House bill, where it will stay, said Fitzenhagen.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"I believe there are scenarios in which local governments should have the authority to call a state of emergency," Fitzenhagen said Wednesday. "I'm not contemplating them calling a state of emergency for riots and then they grab their handguns and go out there into the riot."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But the way the bill is written, it's too confusing for law enforcement officers and gun owners alike, Gualtieri said.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"It would give me pause, as sheriff, in declaring a state of emergency," he said. "If I know cops would have to deal with God knows what, I now have to worry about making a situation worse."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;">--------------------</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;">Florida House Bill 209</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=_h0209e1.docx&DocumentType=Bill&BillNumber=0209&Session=2014">http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=_h0209e1.docx&DocumentType=Bill&BillNumber=0209&Session=2014</a></span></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------<br><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There's room at the top they are telling you still.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- John Lennon</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>