First Coast Reps. divided after protest over gun control on House floor

Northeast Florida lawmakers have mixed opinions on how to move forward with gun control legislation, in the wake of a surprising sit-in protest on the House floor.

The call for common sense gun legislation is coming from both sides of the aisle in Congress following the mass shooting in Orlando, though the definition of common sense greatly varies between the left and the right.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D) is tired of her colleagues talking about gun violence without acting through policy.

“It’s just unbelievable that we’re going to have a moment of silent prayer and that’s it,” Brown told WOKV. “How many times are we going to do a moment of silent prayer and then nothing else?”

Led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Democrats stayed on the House floor for more than 25 hours, demanding a vote on gun legislation. The proposed bill would have banned people on the no-fly list from buying a gun.

It was pointed out by Rep. Ander Crewnshaw (R) that the proposed legislation already failed in committee, and received bipartisan pushback.

“It was not appropriate to have a sit-in on the floor of the House about any issue they knew they couldn’t win,” Crewnshaw said. “(Democrats) had a process, they just ignored it, and used some out-of-school tactics.”

Crenshaw sights the motion to discharge, which would’ve brought the bill up for a full vote if Democrats would have secured 218 signatures.

Much like Crewnshaw, Rep. Ted Yoho (R) claims to be open to talking about gun reform. Yoho is open to finding more funding for mental health care and an evolved screening process.

Yoho would like some kind of warning system in place, in the event that anyone once legitimately on a watch list goes to buy a gun. He said he would be “open minded” to a bill proposed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), which blocks anyone on a terrorist watch list from buying a gun but also puts in place an appeals process.

It is crucial for both Yoho and Crenshaw that some form of due process is in place for those who may be incorrectly placed on watch lists.

Democrats inside and out of the House posited the protest in the same vein as the civil rights protests in the 1960s. Many decades before #NoBillNoBreak existed, Lewis marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through Selma, Ala.

Yoho says aligning this most recent sit-in with the civil rights movement is “despicable.”

“To link this to the civil rights struggle cheapens that and is disrespectful to what the civil rights movement stood for,” Yoho said. “I think it was a very childish action on the part of the Democrats.”

Yoho, a member of the Republican House’s Freedom Caucus, qualifies his criticism of Democrats with disagreement in how Republican leadership handled the protest, as well.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) did not accept multiple invitations to comment on this story.