Florida: $5 million fine proposed for listing of gun owners

10:46am Saturday, March 27, 2004

Floridians have more than 17 years of successful experience with their concealed carry law. Looks as though they've figured out that it is law-abiding license-holders who deserve to be protected - something we must not allow the Ohio media to take 17 years to discover for themselves.

March 25, 2004
Palm Beach Post

TALLAHASSEE -- Squeezed between the cop on the beat and the powerful National Rifle Association, the Senate leaned toward the NRA Wednesday, tentatively approving a bill that would ban government and private lists of gun owners.

"This bill will stop law-abiding gun owners from being profiled simply because they are gun owners," said the sponsor, Sen. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview.

The measure (SB 1152) puts an exclamation point on the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms with criminal penalties and an unprecedented $5 million fine for anyone who knowingly violates its provisions.

In an unusually strong preamble, the bill raises the specter of Hitler's Nazi Germany and Fidel Castro's Cuba as examples of totalitarian regimes that registered and confiscated weapons. Gun registries are not a tool against terrorism but a potential weapon to "harass" law-abiding gun owners, the bill states.

"Further, such a list, record or registry has the potential to fall into the wrong hands and become a shopping list for thieves," the bill states in its legislative findings.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

But crime fighting has proven to be the toughest hurdle for supporters, with police agencies across the state expressing concern that the measure would make it harder to track criminals.

Open-government advocates are also livid.

"There is no anecdotal evidence that I can find to show that people are being profiled," said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. "The danger is that there is no opportunity for law enforcement to keep track of people who are using guns to commit crimes."

The Senate was poised Wednesday to send the bill to Gov. Jeb Bush, since the House had passed it 81-35, but sponsors scrambled to make a few last-minute changes that will force the measure back to the House.

The bill already included a few exemptions, like lists of guns used in crimes or owned by felons, and "membership lists of organizations comprised of firearm owners," such as the NRA.

But Sen. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville, said the measure also needed to exempt police departments that store guns for vacationing owners and for weapons that are confiscated from the mentally ill or domestic-violence suspects.

"These were serious omissions that I think needed to be addressed," Smith said.

He said the compromise measures will assure support from law enforcement groups such as the Police Benevolent Association and the Florida Sheriffs Association.

Bush wants to see the final product before deciding whether to support it, a spokeswoman said. He has hinted he will approve it if police associations do, too.

NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said she has heard complaints from motorists with gun racks who have been harassed by police, but she would not provide details.

"I said South Florida and that's as far as I'm going to go. You figure it out," she said.

She said the changes were window dressing for publicity-seeking opponents.

"It doesn't change the bill at all," she said. "It was comfort language for some people who were twitchy."

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