OfficerBlueTallahassee, FL – The Florida state legislature held a bizarre Saturday session where they accepted a measure to ban the sale of all AR-15 rifles before overruling it 15 minutes later.
The Hill reported that the senate had approved a two-year moratorium on sales of AR-15s. Then after the Senate president ruled that the amendment passed, the legislative body reconsidered it and overturned it in a 21-17 vote.
Republican Senators Anitere Flores of Miami and Rene Garcia of Hialeah voted “yes” with democrats to ban AR-15 sales.
The senate also narrowly voted to advance a proposal to train select teachers to allow them to carry firearms.
Tampa Bay Times reported that most of the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators rejected the measure for fear that armed teachers would target black students.
Senator Oscar Braynon called arming teachers a “recipe for disaster.”
“Minority kids are seen as problems, and they’re the ones who are in the school-to-prison pipeline,” Sen. Braynon said. “They are the ones who overwhelmingly get suspended and now you’re saying these kids are going to be subject to teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, janitors, that may be armed?”
Addressing those concerns, all armed teachers will be required to attend 12 hours of diversity training in addition to 132 hours of firearm training before they can carry a weapon in schools.
132 hours of firearm training is significantly more than almost all police academies in the United States. Fully-trained teachers will be presumably become more qualified with firearms than most police officers.
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