Mayor might pursue gun law

BY LESLEY CLARK
[email protected]

TALLAHASSEE — Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who has waged a two-year
crusade against gun violence, said Tuesday he is inclined to seek a county law
requiring locks on firearms in Miami-Dade homes.

The mayor’s comment came on the heels of a written opinion by state Attorney
General Bob Butterworth on Tuesday that said a new South Miami ordinance
requiring gun locks in homes is legal.

Penelas said he will ask the county attorney to review the South Miami law and
Butterworth’s opinion.

“If I get the OK from [the county attorney] I’d like to pursue a similar ordinance for
the county,” the mayor said. It would be up to the County Commission to pass
such a law and to decide whether it would apply countywide or just in the
unincorporated areas.

Butterworth’s opinion “really provides a tremendous opening for us,” Penelas
added.

“This is very consistent with everything we’re trying to do to protect the safety of
children. This says, `You live in a house with a gun, you’ve to put on a trigger
lock.’ I think that’s a very responsible thing. Every day we pick up newspapers,
kids pick up guns in the home and there’s a shooting, and we could avoid that.”

South Miami’s gun law survived its first challenge from the gun lobby, with
Butterworth opining Tuesday that city officials can lawfully tell residents to keep a
lock on their firearms when children are present.

Jubilant South Miami officials said they expect other cities and towns to take
similar steps.

“We keep hearing these horror stories, and we at the local level feel like we had
to take some kind of initiative on our own,” said South Miami Mayor Julio
Robaina, who said his commissioners were horrified by the shooting death of a
Lake Worth middle school teacher by a student in May.

But the National Rifle Association said Butterworth’s opinion will likely be
challenged in court.

“The attorney general’s opinion is political, and it’s a joke,” said Marion Hammer,
the NRA’s Florida lobbyist. “You don’t allow cities and municipalities to regulate
the First Amendment or any of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights, and you
certainly don’t allow them to regulate the Second Amendment.”

State Sen. John Grant, a Tampa Republican, asked Butterworth last month for an
opinion on whether South Miami’s ordinance is illegal.

Grant argued the ordinance “clearly” violates a 1987 law he sponsored that gives
the Legislature sole authority over the “whole field” of firearms and ammunition,
including “ownership” and “possession.”

“If local governments have difficulty understanding that `whole’ means `whole’ . . .
they should note that possession is specifically mentioned, and storage is
possession,” Grant said.

And Grant argued that state law already requires firearms to be safely secured in
the presence of children — either in a locked box, a “secure location” or with a
trigger lock — and that “state law regulates this area so extensively as to exclude
local regulation.”

But Butterworth’s three-page decision disagreed on both points, finding that the
1987 state law prohibits local regulations “that interfere with an individual’s right
to bear arms.

“A requirement that gun owners secure their firearms with a gun lock does not
necessarily interfere with that right,” Butterworth wrote.

And he said the city ordinance does not conflict with the state law that requires
the safe storage of guns because it doesn’t call for gun owners to violate state
law.

“They’ve defined the word `secure,’ ” Butterworth told The Herald Tuesday. “The
city has defined how a gun is to be secured.”

And he rejected Hammer’s contention that his opinion was politically motivated.

“It’s an official opinion of the office, based on research and law,” Butterworth said.
“We’re not in business of political opinions.”

South Miami Mayor Robaina said City Attorney Earl Gallop labored on the
language for weeks and Butterworth complimented the effort.

“I believe the city was very innovative in how they drafted the law,” Butterworth
said. “They’re saying when a gun is secured in that city that it must be stored in
a safe way, with a trigger lock, and that’s fine.”