Most politicians tread carefully when speaking of school shooters and guns in America and the role mental illness has played in scores of mass shootings.
Most try not to offend the mentally ill, especially because the vast majority of mentally ill Americans don’t spray schools and groceries and synagogues with bullets. But not Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
This week, speaking of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead last month, DeSantis referred to school shooters as “nut jobs” and “lunatics” and said he does not support violating Second Amendment rights to prevent mass shootings in Florida or the nation.
The governor had this warning for any potential school shooter in Florida: ”If you’re one of these nut jobs... If you try that, you’re going to end up on your ass and it’s not going to end up being pretty and you’re not going to walk out of there alive.”
Definitely not the words and tone of a statesman, but we gave up that expectation long ago. Rather, it’s just DeSantis on the campaign trail, appealing to his base and, frankly, many others who don’t have much good to say about people who carry out mass shootings.
At another presser a day later, DeSantis said, “Leftists are just coming after your Second Amendment rights.” More overblown fodder for the base, but expected.
Speaking at a news conference in Fort Myers Beach on Wednesday, the governor cited the closure of large mental hospitals during the Ronald Reagan era for ending the institutionalization of dangerous people in our community.
DeSantis said focusing on the killers, not the guns, is the way to go.
”What you do is, you focus on the criminal, and you focus on the lunatic. You don’t kneecap the rights of law-abiding citizens,” he said.
DeSantis is smart enough to know that this is not an either-or proposition, especially because so many mass shooters don’t become criminals until they get a semi-automatic in their hands. And does his admonition to “focus on the criminal” mean that he supports closer monitoring of social-media sites, especially those on which white supremacists, incels, Islamophobes, homophobes, anti-Semites — and haters, in general — spew hateful language that can motivate domestic terrorists to act? We’re not so sure.
However, DeSantis this week quietly signed a bill aimed at better identifying the “nut jobs and lunatics,” as he calls them.
The bill will require mental-health “crisis intervention” training for on-campus officers, among other school-safety tightening changes. The Legislature formally sent the bill (HB 1421) to DeSantis a day after the May 24 Uvalde shooting. DeSantis’ office announced the signing Tuesday in a news release without a public appearance.
Why so quiet? Is the legislation too warm and fuzzy for our tough-guy governor? It’s a good bill worth crowing about, every bit as much as his flaunting his tussle with Disney, his ban on Critical Race Theory and his anti-mask-mandate fervor. And it’s a lot more relevant to everyday Floridians, too.
