Residents' gun rights couldn't be blocked by local officials under new state legislation
New legislation this year that would prohibit local governments from declaring a local emergency that suspends the sale of guns and ammunition cleared its first committee Tuesday.
Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, easily persuaded the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee to support repeal of a Florida statute that empowers a county sheriff, city police chief or other official to proclaim an emergency whenever an imminent threat to the public peace occurs.
Ingoglia said his bill (SB 952) simply clears up confusion created by having separate state laws empowering both the governor and local officials to declare emergencies.
Florida does not restrict gun rights when the governor proclaims a statewide emergency. But it does ban firearm sales and displays when a local government declares one.
Current law says when there is a local state of emergency a person may not:
Sell or offer to sell firearms or ammunition
Display firearms for the purpose of selling
Intentionally possess a firearm in a public place
Jed Carroll, Florida deputy state director of Gun Owners of America, told the committee current law places unconstitutional prohibitions on gun rights 'at the very time when people need to be able to protect themselves.'
Other Second Amendment advocates followed him to the lectern to tell lawmakers that local governments had used the statute to ban firearms sales and rights during the COVID pandemic, civil rights protests, and last September when Hurricane Helene struck.
Gun advocates have sought the right to carry firearms during a declared emergency at least since 2014, when former Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, filed a bill (SB 296).
'We should be getting rid of the statute (because) it's confusing' – and probably unconstitutional, Ingoglia told the committee.
The panel approved the repeal with a unanimous vote. The measure has one more committee before it can get a hearing by the full Senate. An identical bill in the House was scheduled for its own hearing later Wednesday.
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Effort to end local gun bans during emergencies moves in Legislature
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Ari Aster's ‘Eddington' Sharply Divides Cannes: Star Pedro Pascal Defends a Western About ‘Our Worst Fears' Amid Lockdown
When writer/director Ari Aster stood up for the ovation after the Cannes premiere of his divisive 2020-set Western 'Eddington' (July 16, A24), he said, 'I feel very privileged to be here. This is a dream come true. Thank you so much for having me. And, I don't know, sorry?' Indeed, festival attendees have been fiercely divided by his 145-minute portrait of a fictional New Mexico town wracked by COVID, BLM, ACAB, you-name-it-2020-buzz-concept during the darkest season of American lives in recent memory. Joaquin Phoenix (Aster's 'Beau Is Afraid') plays a conservative sheriff who decides to run against his Gavin Newsom-esque, pro-masks-and-testing adversary, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), in the local mayoral election. More from IndieWire The Cannes 2025 Films So Far Most Likely to End Up in the Oscar Race 'Imago' Review: Chechen Documentary Explores a Filmmaker's Conflicted Return to His Roots Meanwhile, at home, Phoenix's character Joe Cross is in a quarantine bubble with his hysteria-addled wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her far-right conspiracy-obsessed mother Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), the type for whom hydroxychloroquine was presumably a panacea. But Joe's campaign is all anti-masks, anti-vax, with the threat of cult leader Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) also posing a challenge to his political and personal life. The film has sparked massive debates up and down the Croisette since premiering Friday night, with the starriest red carpet thus far and a press conference Saturday afternoon featuring Aster with his actors Phoenix, Pascal (in a sleeveless top), Stone (in a pixie haircut, her hair growing back presumably after shaving it off for Yorgos Lanthimos' upcoming 'Bugonia'), and Michael Ward, who plays Phoenix's next-in-command. IndieWire has talked to people who loved or hated the film, with rarely any opinion in between and certainly never without a strong response of some kind from anyone — whether out of boredom or raptures over Aster's in-your-face replay of our worst COVID-times memories. 'Eddington' could be a tough sell for audiences unwilling to be submersed again in summer 2020 and all the chaos and anxieties it erupted. Other pundits I've spoken to defend 'Eddington' as a necessary social satire that mocks and derides the panic of that year, while encapsulating it all into one movie as never before. IndieWire critic David Ehrlich wrote in his rave review that 'few other filmmakers would have the chutzpah required' to pull this movie off, 'and we should probably all be grateful that none of them have tried.' 'It's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this,' Pascal said at the press conference. 'It's far too intimidating a question for me to address. I'm not informed enough. I want people to be safe and protective. I want very much to be on the right side of history.' 'Eddington' indeed takes shots at both sides of the aisle, roasting liberal posturing in the form of social justice youth like Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), who posts TikToks about James Baldwin and rants about having any position at all on 'stolen land.' Phoenix's sheriff character, meanwhile, could only be wrought from the era of Trump, as he rails against mask mandates and is suspicious of the George Floyd-inspired protests shaking up his community. At one point, he swaggers into a grocery store with the pompousness of Western's most classic, gun-on-the-hip cowboys. Pascal added, 'I felt like [Aster] wrote something that was all our worst fears as that lockdown experience was already a fracturing society. This was building toward an untethered sense of reality. There is a point of not going back. I was overwhelmed by that fear, and it's wonderful that it was confirmed by Ari.' Aster, whose latest feature is a hairpin departure from the genre thrills and chills of films like 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar' and is far from the spirit of intrusive-thought-induced weirdness of 'Beau Is Afraid,' added, 'I wrote this movie in a state of fear and anxiety. I wanted to try and pull back and show what it feels like to live in a world where nobody can agree on what is real anymore.' 'Eddington' is his first feature to premiere at Cannes. 'I feel like we're on a dangerous road, and we're living in an experiment that hasn't gone well,' Aster said (via Deadline) about his MAGA- and liberal-skewering Western. 'I feel there is no way out of it… Mass liberal democracies always had this fundamental agreement we agree what we're arguing about, that system was coming from power. So it's not like suddenly there's this bad power out there. It's always been there, but right now it's chaos.' Stone, who connected with Aster amid his 2024 'Beau Is Afraid,' said that her research into the conspiracy theories that turn her character against her husband even ended up modifying her personal social media algorithms (via Variety). 'The only additional thing that scared me a little bit in the algorithm system was looking into some of the things that are in this film that haven't been in my algorithm, unfortunately, added them to my algorithm,' she said. 'Because once you start Googling it, you start seeing more and more things. So it's a real rabbit hole, very quickly. Unfortunately, I'm still getting fed some crazy shit.' 'Eddington' is still the most conversation-starting Competition premiere at Cannes, with critics split over its social message and pacing (it's currently at 63 on Metacritic, where you can find reviews all over the map). How A24 will market this movie — only one teaser has been released so far, showing Phoenix doom-scrolling through familiar images of the deepest COVID era — is an intriguing question in the lead-up to its July theatrical release. Alex Garland's 'Civil War,' another post-COVID story of national conflict, did well for A24 last year, grossing more than $127 million by tapping into a fascination factor over a divided United States. Who will 'Eddington' appeal to? Either way, it's pitting Cannes audiences against each other — Screen Daily called it a 'wan satire,' while Variety deemed it 'brazenly provocative' — and will no doubt continue to stoke debate into the summer. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
2024 Election Results Under Scrutiny as Lawsuit Advances
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A legal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 election is moving forward. The lawsuit, brought by SMART Legislation, the action arm of SMART Elections, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed the lawsuit over voting discrepancies in Rockland County, New York. Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court ruled in open court in May that the allegations were serious enough for discovery to proceed. Newsweek has contacted SMART Elections for comment via email. People cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the general election in Michigan at the Livingston Educational Service Agency in Howell on November 3, 2024. People cast their ballots on the last day of early voting for the general election in Michigan at the Livingston Educational Service Agency in Howell on November 3, 2024. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images Why It Matters The lawsuit could renew debate about the 2024 election, though it won't change the outcome since Congress has certified the results declaring President Donald Trump the winner. It comes amid unconfirmed reports that voting machines were secretly altered before ballots were cast in November's election. The federally accredited testing lab, Pro V&V, that signed off on "significant" changes to ES&S voting machines—which are used in over 40 percent of U.S. counties—"vanished from public view" after the election, according to the Dissent in Bloom Substack. What To Know According to the complaint, more voters have sworn in legal affidavits that they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections counted and certified, contradicting those results. The complaint also cited numerous statistical anomalies in the presidential election results. They include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but none voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. Max Bonamente, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the author of the Statistics and Analysis of Scientific Data, said in a paper that the 2024 presidential election results were statistically highly unlikely in four of the five towns in Rockland County when compared with 2020 results. What People Are Saying Lulu Friesdat, the founder and executive director of SMART Legislation, said in a statement: "There is clear evidence that the Senate results are incorrect, and there are statistical indications that the presidential results are highly unlikely. "If the results are incorrect, it is a violation of the constitutional rights of each person who voted in the 2024 Rockland County general election. The best way to determine if the results are correct is to examine the paper ballots in a full public, transparent hand recount of all presidential and Senate ballots in Rockland County. We believe it's vitally important, especially in the current environment, to be absolutely confident about the results of the election." Max Bonamente said in a paper on the voting data from Rockland County: "These data would require extreme sociological or political causes for their explanation, and would benefit from further assurances as to their fidelity." Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek: "Statistical irregularities in elections should always be investigated, but the sources of such inconsistencies, which can include error or miscalculation, are not always nefarious. Still, scrutinizing election results can strengthen confidence in elections. Mistakes can happen. "In this case, the drop-off inconsistencies could reflect the idiosyncratic nature of the 2024 presidential election cycle. Alone, statistical comparisons to previous cycles cannot provide definitive proof of wrongdoing. "In any case, it does not appear that any of these inconsistencies would be sufficient to change the outcomes of any of the elections in question in New York state. That does not mean they should not be scrutinized, and any errors, if verified, should be corrected for the historical record. But there is not necessarily any need to invalidate any of these elections in these jurisdictions." What's Next The lawsuit is seeking a full, hand recount of ballots cast in the presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County. A hearing has been scheduled for September 22.
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Trump's 'big beautiful' spending bill could make it harder to claim this low-income tax credit
As Senate Republicans debate President Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill", a lesser-known provision from the House-approved package could make it harder to claim a low-income tax credit. If enacted as written, the House measure in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" would require precertification of each qualifying child for filers claiming the so-called earned income tax credit, or EITC, starting in 2028. Under current law, taxpayers claim the EITC on their tax return — including Schedule EIC for qualifying children. The provision aims to "avoid duplicative and other erroneous claims," according to the bill's text. But policy experts say the new rules would burden eligible filers, who may forgo the EITC as a result. The measure could also delay tax refunds for those filers, particularly amid IRS cutbacks, experts say. More from Personal Finance:Job market is 'trash' right now, career coach says — here's whyWhat a 'revenge tax' in Trump's spending bill could mean for investorsWhat Trump's plan to slash Pell Grant to lowest level in a decade means for you "You're going to flood the IRS with all these [EITC] documents," said Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's just not clear how they're going to process all this information." Holtzblatt, who has pushed to simplify the EITC for decades, wrote a critique of the proposed precertification last week. "This is not a new idea, but was previously considered, studied and rejected for very good reasons," Greg Leiserson, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at New York University Law, wrote about the proposal in late May. Studies during the George W. Bush administration found an EITC precertification process reduced EITC claims for eligible filers, Leiserson wrote. During the study, precertification also yielded a lower return on investment compared to existing EITC enforcement, such as audits, he wrote. One of the key benefits of the EITC is the tax break is "refundable," meaning you can still claim the credit and get a refund with zero taxes owed. That's valuable for lower earners who don't have a tax bill, experts say. To qualify, you need "earned income," or wages from work. The income phase-outs depend on your "qualifying children," based on four IRS tests. "Eligibility is complicated," and residency requirements for qualifying children often cause errors, said Holtzblatt with the Tax Policy Center. For 2025, the tax break is worth up to $8,046 for eligible families. You can claim the maximum EITC with adjusted gross income up to $61,555 for single filers and $68,675 for married couples filing jointly. These phase-outs apply to families with three or more children. As of December 2024, about 23 million workers received the EITC for tax year 2022, according to the IRS. But 1 in 5 eligible taxpayers don't claim the tax break, the agency estimates. Nine Democratic Senators last week voiced concerns about the House-approved EITC changes in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. If enacted, the updates would "further complicate the EITC's existing challenges and make it more difficult to claim," the lawmakers wrote. Higher earners are more likely to face an audit, but EITC claimants have a 5.5 times higher audit rate than the rest of U.S. filers, partly due to improper payments, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The proposed EITC change, among other House provisions, still need Senate approval, and it's unclear how the measure could change. However, under the reconciliation process, Senate Republicans only need a simple majority to advance the bill.
