It is being widely reported that the Republicans in the Florida house blocked debate on banning weapons. This is a very misleading claim that we rate mostly false. The legislators voted to not debate then vote on a bill that they had not read.
The legislature was working on their normal business and Rep. Kionne McGhee a Democratic Representative from Miami and an attorney used a procedural rule that allows any member to make a motion to bring House Bill 219 (HB-219) out of committee and bring it to the floor. This motion is rarely used, members could only recall it being used twice in the last 12 years. Rep. McGhee said “While this is an extraordinary procedural move, the shooting in Parkland demands extraordinary action.”
Some students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida were in the gallery when this happened and their agony has been widely shown. The students were unaware that what was going on was not a serious attempt to pass a law. They saw the vote as an insult to what they had suffered. A “procedural game” was played to either force representatives to vote on HB-219 an “assault rifle” ban law they or the committee staff had not yet reviewed or vote to leave the bill in committee.
The motion requires a supermajority (⅔) of legislators to approve it, since it short circuits the normal process for bills. If the motion passes to move the bill from committee to the floor, the bill jumps over a number of steps and moves to a third reading and a vote. (There is no first and second reading.) The third reading of a bill only allows debate about the bill. The legislators are not allowed to ask questions about the bill, since by this point normally a bill would have been well explained. They could not offer amendments since amendments must be available a day in advance. The legislators could not really debate the bill since they had not read it and had no idea what was in it.
The legislature voted to not allow this “extraordinary procedural move” and the bill is still in committee. Since the committees are no longer in session that bill is most likely dead for this session.
Jared Moskowitz, a 1999 graduate of Stoneman Douglas and the Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing the 97th District which contains Parkland issued a statement where he called the move “procedural games.”
“The decision to make a procedural motion to bring HB 219 to the floor was brought up with zero notice. The majority of Democratic members of our caucus were not aware that any motion would be made and several were not present on the floor.
“I was in my district attending Peter Wang’s funeral. Peter was a hero. He held the door open so other students could survive and it cost him his life. I know in my heart I was where I needed to be yesterday. Paying my respects to a hero.
“I have been and will continue to work with Democrats and the Republican majority to pass a bill that addresses the tragedy in my hometown.
“Procedural games will not make policy. Only members from both parties working together on legislation will bring the gun safety changes we need to prevent this from ever happening again.”
Rep. Blaise Ingoglia Republican Hernando (District 35), who represents much of Hernando County, said, “Every one of my constituents should be happy, I did not vote on a bill I had not read, and had no idea what was in it.”
How a bill normally moves through the House of Representatives.
The bill is filed by a representative. Each representative is allowed to file up to 6 bills per session. Although there are some types of bills that do not count towards this limit, in every session there are more than a 1000 bills. The bill is given a first reading and assigned to a committee or committees.
In the first committee, if the bill is selected by the committee chair and put on the agenda, the bill is debated and amended. Testimony is given about the bill. If the bill is approved by the first committee it moves to the next until it passes through all the committees it has been assigned to.
Once a bill has passed all the committees it has been assigned to it is placed on the calendar to be heard on the floor. If the bill’s time comes up before the end of the session, it then goes on the house floor where the bill’s sponsor explains the bill. The sponsor answers questions about the bill, which the legislators have in front of them.
The legislators then go home and the third reading, debate, and vote is on the next day. A legislator will have the committee staff’s analysis and will have read the bill and had time to think about what the implications are of the wording and what the definitions mean.
HB 219
HB 219 was assigned to three committees: Criminal Justice Subcommittee, Justice Appropriations Subcommittee, and the Judiciary Committee. It had not advanced in the first of the committees to which it had been submitted. HB 219 was submitted in October and hasn’t moved from the first committee.
Usually as a bill progresses through the committee, the bill is amended many times as legislators point out potential problems with the law. Issues that will present themselves in the future are noticed and fixed. HB 219 had not received these fixes.
HB 219 defines assault weapons and lists a number of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. To call this a ban on assault rifles is not accurate. In fact, any pistol that accepts a detachable magazine and has a threaded barrel or weighs more than 3.125 pounds is considered an assault weapon in HB219.
The full text of the bill is below as a PDF.
NRA
A narrative around the failure to advance HB 219 is that the legislature is beholden to the NRA, because of campaign contributions. The Tampa Bay Times’, “The Buzz” blog found that “since 2000, the NRA’s donations to current members of Florida’s House and Senate amount to a grand total of zero.” The NRA does have significant influence, but that is from their many politically active members.
Consequences
The results of the inaccurate reporting on this issue has lead to a tremendous amount of vitriol online. The names of the people who voted against the “extraordinary procedural move” have been listed far and wide. The amount of misinformation about what the House of Representatives was voting on juxtaposed with the crying school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has led to anger and hate.
As the Democratic State Representative of Parkland Jared Moskowitz wrote “Procedural games will not make policy. Only members from both parties working together on legislation will bring the gun safety changes we need to prevent this from ever happening again.”