In four hours, your state legislature will convene for an extraordinary session pursuant to Gov. Bill Lee's proclamation dated August 8, 2023.
Unfortunately, the governor's proclamation prevents us from introducing and debating legislation that would address the root cause of gun violence. The only permissive provision of the 18 clause proclamation that refers to "firearms" reads as follows:
(11) Measures encouraging the safe storage of firearms, which do not include the creation of penalties for failing to safely store firearms.
That's it. The bulk of the proclamation opens the door to rolling back a decade's worth of progress on criminal justice reform, notably taking aim at minors. Rather than investing money in our children and providing positive mentoring and programming for them in a manner that might prevent juvenile crime on the front end, the governor and supermajority appear more interested in spending a lot more money in trying juvenile offenders as adults and incarcerating them in prisons after crimes have been committed and individuals have been harmed.
