On Friday Governor Scott unveiled a comprehensive plan to reform school safety, the mental health system and gun control. My initial takeaway was a bit of surprise regarding how detailed, considered and extensive it was for such a short window of time (one full week) in the wake of the Parkland shooting. My goal in this two-part story is to evaluate the major proposals and apply the best public sentiment to them that's available. In the first story I broke out each of the major initiatives proposed. Now let's evaluate them based on the best read of public sentiment available.
The first important note as we explore the governor's proposal is that there's extremely high support for reforms generally. In other words - doing nothing vs doing something isn't where the collective is. The most recent accredited polling before Parkland, Gallup and the most recent late last week (after the initial emotions had been accounted for painted similar pictures).
60% wanted reforms prior to Parkland, 66% after (Gallup/Quinnipiac)
Notably even 50% of existing gun owners want reforms. So, let's evaluate the governor's proposals though this lens.
Raising the legal age to purchase to 21 - no current accredited information
Banning bump stocks - 88% support ban
Violent threat restraining order for gun control purposes - 57% believe the most important reforms needed are mental health related
Violent threat restraining order for mental health evaluation - 97% believe strong mental health evaluations need to occur
Increased armed security on campus - 57% support (40% support armed educators)
So, to the extent that we can run the governor's proposals through the prism of accredited information available to us we can see that every major proposal that we can accurately access has solid support behind it with this being the order of accepted reforms based on the most public support:
Violent threat restraining order
Banning bump stocks
Increased security on campus
Of note, by a margin of 50% to 46% against - a slight majority don't believe banning AR's is the answer. This wasn't part of the governor's plan but is part of a broader gun control debate that might occur at the federal level.