Florida GOP Seems to Have Done Us a Good One

From The Truth About Guns, I learn that the Florida GOP did some work behind the scenes to block a developing plan to put an assault weapons ban on the ballot as a ballot initiative.  I wrote about this back in February, but the bottom line is that the usual anti-gun groups had formed a group called BAWN - Ban Assault Weapons NOW!  (with the exclamation point and all caps) that was primed to get a ballot initiative onto the 2020 ballots.  As always, the wording would ban every semiautomatic from a Ruger 10/22 to Barret M107A1 along with everything between and beyond.

You will note that BAWN is part of Americans for Gun Safety Now, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg Lobbying Industries, Inc. (yes, I made that up).  Back to TTAG for some important details:

There were two bills originally submitted this legislative session, HB 7111 and SB 7096. They were mirror bills that would require paid petition gatherers to register with the Secretary of State and to attest that he or she is a Florida resident for a specified period before obtaining signatures on petition forms. The bills also required the name of the sponsor of an initiative to appear on the ballot with the percentage of donations received from certain in-state donors. Finally, the bills prohibited compensation for initiative petition gatherers based on the number of signatures gathered.

If passed, the law would have gone into effect immediately for any initiative meant for the 2020 ballot. However both bills died in committee on May 3rd.

Yet on the last day of session, the very day that both bills died, another avenue of advancement presented itself. HB 5, a local discretionary sales surtax bill. Opponents of the AWB tacked the language on as an amendment and HB 5 which passed both the House and Senate and is now on its way to Gov. DeSantis’ desk.

Due to my naturally skeptical view of anything I read and pass on, I checked this with the Florida.gov websites and find HB5 did, indeed pass in the House and the Senate.   I can't find that this has been signed by Governor DeSantis, so it apparently isn't law, yet.

The way I read the requirements, it doesn't stop BAWN, but it raises the cost of entry.  It will require them to actually be incorporated in Florida, employ petition signature harvesters rather than pay by the signature and incentivize fraud, impose penalties for signature fraud, and do a few more things that can't stop an Astroturf group like BAWN but can make Bloomberg pay a bit more.   "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money" (supposedly).