The NRA Is Suing Florida

The NRA has announced that it’s suing its best friend Florida, hours after Florida Governor Rick Scott nominally recognized 17 lives lost by signing an uneven but not-totally-insignificant gun control act. The act includes a handful of gun safety measures, including raising the minimum age for firearm purchases to 21, penalizing social media threats against schools, increasing funding for mental health treatment and mandating “safe-school officers” (presumably armed) in each school.

The NRA is furious on behalf of aspiring teen gun owners and their social media-friendly constitutional right #2A. “Swift action is needed to prevent young adults in Florida from being treated as second-class citizens when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms,” Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. “We are confident that the courts will vindicate our view that Florida’s ban is a blatant violation of the Second Amendment.”

Scott, longtime peddler of instruments of death, dwelling amongst the living–a.k.a, a self-identified NRA member who has received an “A+” grade from the group–has previously signed into law the “docs vs. Glocks” bill which would have prevented doctors from asking patients if they own guns. (Blessedly, that was struck down by an appeals court). Now with that chapter resurfacing in an attack ad, high school students implicating him in the news, and an expected senatorial run pending, Scott has turned a page. It is called the “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act.”

The act is still disappointing to students who had wanted the swiftly-dismissed ban on assault weapons altogether, and it includes the elusive “Coach Aaron Feis guardian program,” which ostensibly honors the football coach who ran into the line of fire to shield students from bullets, and effectively trains school employees to use guns. But students are recognizing it as a step.