- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Next on WEDU, another mass shooting stuns the country.

We'll survey reaction from Florida.

And the Legislature meets to address the housing insurance crisis.

Our guests are, former Florida CFO, Alex Sink, former State Senator, Mike Fasano.

Mom's Demand Actions, Tamiko Armbrister, and Tampa Bay Times reporter, Lawrence Mower.

All coming up right now, on "Florida this Week."

(bright upbeat music) Welcome back.

Another mass shooting this week, this time at an elementary school in Texas.

It renewed the debate over how to protect innocent people from a gun owner who's bent on murder.

Yet again an AR 15 Style Assault weapon was used, similar to the weapons used in Buffalo, Sandy Hook, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Orlando, and the Las Vegas massacres.

Since the beginning of this month, there have been more than 40 mass shootings in the US, more than one every day, resulting in at least 60 deaths, and more than 130 people wounded.

Some parents were even concerned that law enforcement did not engage the shooter quickly enough.

- Six year old kids in there.

They don't know how to defend themselves from a shooter.

- On the day of the shooting, the governor of Texas said the shooter had no known mental health history, and that there was no meaningful forewarning that the crime was about to take place, contradicting claims by those who say that mental illness, is the primary cause of mass shootings.

Later without citing evidence, the governor claimed the shooter had a mental health challenge.

Texas is last in the nation for access to mental healthcare.

AR 15s are a semiautomatic version of weapons designed for warfare.

Once a high powered projectile from an AR 15 enters a human body, it tends to make a small entry wound, explodes pulverizing bones, tearing away blood vessels, and liquefying organs causing massive catastrophic damage.

In Texas, some of the children were so badly injured, they were unrecognizable by their parents.

The killer in Texas legally purchased two military style assault rifles, just days after his 18th birthday.

After this latest attack, Florida's US senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott urged passage of the Luke and Alex School Safety Act, named after two victims of the Parkland School Shooting.

- With this legislation, the Luke and Alex School Safety Act, codifies a federal school safety clearinghouse, by informing parents and educators on expert recommendations, and best practices that schools can implement to improve school security.

This bill builds on our work to keep schools safe, and prevent another tragedy.

- Meanwhile Democrats spoke out against the governor's recent proposal to allow open carry of guns statewide, without a license or a permit.

- For this governor just a few weeks ago, discuss adding to this special session, what he calls constitutional carry.

I don't know if you've read the constitution but there's no such freaking thing.

What there is, is a constitutional right to live.

A constitutional right to go to school and learn, and not have to worry about your kid not coming home.

- One of the groups working to prevent gun violence in the US is Mom's Demand Action.

They have chapters in Florida and across the country.

Tamiko Armbrister is a volunteer with the Broward Chapter the Organization, and she joins us now.

Tamiko, welcome to the program.

- Thank you so much for having me today.

- We've learned that, a one armed 18 year old with a lot of ammunition was able to hold off 19 law enforcement officers for about an hour.

What does that say to you?

- Rob, first of all, I just wanna start by saying that we are absolutely devastated, over the mass shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo, and in California.

In Buffalo, once again, a domestic terrorist targeted a black community, he was armed with white supremacist ideology and armed with weapons.

These weapons supplied by an industry that caters to extremists.

As a result, Rob, many of the beloved elders and leaders, and loved ones of a black community have been killed.

And the black community is already disproportionately impacted by gun violence.

So as a black woman in America, this is personal for me.

In Uvalde, we're witnessing a violent world, where the gun lobby has created, this violent world.

And our lawmakers have enabled, this violent world, and who's impacted at this time?

This shooter was able to shoot for all that time, and who was impacted?

Our precious children, our teachers, in one of our predominantly Latinx communities.

And they have suffered the ultimate consequence.

In California- - Locally, we had a sheriff on Friday say that we need no further new laws when it comes to gun control in the US.

What would you say to that sheriff?

- We've seen these mass shootings over and over in recent years.

And I don't wanna diminish the work, that advocates have done, but there is so much more that can be done.

So I totally disagree.

Florida has made progress, after the Parkland shooting, some policies have been put in place, but it's now stalled.

And our governments are taking steps now to make things worse.

Look at Alabama and Georgia.

Alabama and Georgia have already passed Permitless Carry, and it's the last thing that Florida needs.

It's absolutely crucial, that we do everything that we can, to prevent this bill, to prevent this bill, from going any further.

We need to hold our lawmakers accountable, because catering to the gun lobby will only make people less safe.

We do need to call on lawmakers, and we need to stand up, and make sure that Permitless Carry does not go any further.

- The former governor, now US Senator, Rick Scott said this week that we need to pass the Luke and Alex School Safety Act, which was something that he advocates.

And Marco Rubio, fellow US senator advocates.

Is this a good thing to pass?

- This is a thing that we should definitely sit down and speak to our lawmakers about.

And what's more important, what's very important, is for our lawmakers to do the will of the people.

Do the will of the people.

- What is that?

What do the polls say?

What does the public want?

For instance, should AR 15 style weapons be banned?

- Listen, we don't see a need for AR 15 guns.

What is the need for that, in our local communities?

We need to keep a system in place, that mandates things like background checks, and safety trainings for gun owners, because you know why?

We deserve to feel safe, dropping our kids off to school.

We deserve to be safe, going to the grocery store, walking down the street, and going about our lives.

This is critical, and the Senate must take action.

- We've heard this week that, some people are advocating more hardening of schools, hiring additional staff to protect the schools and making schools even more secure, maybe even having one door for entry and exit.

- We do need to do everything that we need to do to keep our schools safe.

While I'm here, I also want to address, the idea of thoughts and prayers.

As an ordained minister, I really wanna speak to faith leaders, and I want you to know that prayer does work in the spirit realm, but we also need to do the earthly work for natural manifestation.

At some point we've gotta get off our knees, we've gotta come out of our prayer closets, with prayer in our hearts, but we need to help solve this epidemic of gun violence.

We have influence, and people take cues from us, and if we act others will do the same.

We need to act now, and we need to do everything that we possibly can to keep our schools safe.

- Tamiko Armbrister, from Mom's Demand Action.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

(soft piano music) - In a bipartisan vote, the state legislature proved two bills in a special session this week, trying to address Florida's soaring homeowners insurance rates.

- [Lawrence] Supporters said the bill will stabilize the property insurance market, critics said the measures don't do enough to help homeowners.

The hurricane season starts this Tuesday, and some homeowners are getting nervous because, some are seeing their insurance rates double.

They need the coverage, but can they afford to pay?

- Lawrence Mower reports on the capital and has been covering the homeowner's insurance crisis.

And Lawrence, welcome back.

Good to see you.

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

- So the big question I think everybody has is, what did they do and will homeowners insurance rates come down?

- Well, the first answer to that is that they did a lot of little things.

The second answer, is that no, rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.

Well, basically what they did, is they created a new $2 billion fund to help, these insurance companies that are struggling stay afloat through through the storm season.

They put a number of caps on attorney's fees, which insurance companies blame for all these rising rates.

Really the only short term measure, they did for people is to kind of address a problem that a lot of homeowners have been experiencing which is that, as these companies are increasing rates they're also kicking people off their policies.

Refusing to renew people, refusing to insure people, if they have a home with an older roof.

Now, if your roof is 10 years old, sometimes 5 years old, these companies are not insuring you.

And what the state legislature did, to alleviate that issue, is basically said that the insurance companies can't refuse to deny you coverage, or refuse you coverage, just because your roof is older.

If your roof is under the 15 years of age, they basically said you can't just reject someone, because of the age of the roof.

If your roof is over 15 years, they basically said that you can ask for an inspection, and somebody can come out, and if that person determines that your roof, you've got five years of life left in it, then you can get insured.

They basically can't reject you just because of that.

- Wasn't part of the deal, when creating this $2 billion fund that insurance companies have access to.

Wasn't part of the deal to lower rates if they had access to that fund?

- Yes, actually that's any company that wants to tap into this, basically this is a $2 billion fund, it offers reinsurance to insurance companies.

Basically, this is the insurance that insurance companies buy ahead of storm season.

And anybody that chooses to participate in this, as opposed to buying coverage on the private market, they are required to lower rates accordingly.

Now, the big question is, how many companies are actually gonna participate in this?

And it doesn't seem like a lot are going to, we just don't know.

If your insurance company is participating, yeah, you could see some savings, but again, the insurance companies could still be asking for bigger rate.

They still could be raising rates, while they just might not be raising rates, as much as they might have been if this fund did not exist.

- Lawrence, some people like State Senator Jeff Brandes have warned that insurance companies are closing or leaving the state and a lot of customers are being forced into Citizens, the state run insurance company.

And I'm just wondering, what do you know?

And you've reported on this.

What do you know about why insurance companies are closing or leaving the state?

- This is really the big question here.

What has been talked about up in Tallahassee, is that this is all about insurance companies.

Excuse me, this is all about lawyers suing insurance companies and that's driving up rates.

And while the number of lawsuits, have gone up dramatically over the years, it's not exactly clear, how much that actually costs these companies.

There's not like a one-to-one correlation between the rates that insurance companies are requesting the rate increases, and the number of lawsuits that are being filed against these companies.

I tried to find out, why some of these companies are failing, we don't really know the most recent companies why they're failing but, we do know that this issue is quite a bit more complicated.

There have been companies that have been going under for decades now in Florida.

It is a very turbulent property insurance market, for a lot of reasons, namely hurricanes being a big one.

The state basically does examine these companies when they fail, and they find that, at least for the records that exist on these companies, and the reports that have been done so far, not one is really citing lawsuits.

Most of these things are citing, basically they're blaming the companies themselves for going under.

Financial mismanagement, in some cases, stripping the companies of cash.

We're talking about domestic insurers, we're not necessarily talking about the state firms and the all states, which do right in Florida.

We're talking about these domestic companies that basically, have shell companies and sister companies that, draw money out of the actual insurance company, and charge the insurance company exorbitant fees and stuff.

- Well, Lawrence.

Thanks for coming on the program and explaining this really important issue.

Great to see you.

- Thank you for having me, Rob.

(soft piano music) - Joining us this week on our panel.

Alex sink is the former Chief Financial Officer of Florida, a one time candidate for governor and a Democrat.

And Mike Fasano is a Pasco County Tax Collector, a former State Senator and a Republican.

Great to see both of you.

- Thank you.

- Mike, let me start with you.

What's your re reaction to what happened in Uvalde, Texas this week, and how could we make Florida kids safer?

- Well, of course the evil occurred in Uvalde of course the other day.

I think Florida has come a long way.

Legislation was passed, we're one of six states in the nation, that prevents anyone from under 21, buying semi-automatic weapon.

I commend the former governor for doing something like that.

Our legislature back in 2020 or 21, I believe it was.

I think the schools have done an excellent job, in making certain that they're well protected.

As you know every elementary school today in Florida, has an SRO.

They have someone there and in fact, others in fact are there today in our elementary schools making sure, that they're well protected.

The schools are locked down immediately once there's any kind of an event in the community, they lock the schools down immediately.

That's why it's kind of surprising that you had this guy, an 18 year old who by the way, shouldn't be buying an automatic weapon at 18 years old in the state of Texas.

My goodness!

Back there in Texas, you have to be 21 to get a handgun, but they'll sell this gentleman, this young man if you will, an automatic weapon at 18.

It took him 12 minutes from the time he got into the accident to get to the school.

I can't believe something didn't go out to lock down that school during that 12 minute time.

Florida has come a long way, I think there's a lot more that can be done.

Mental illness is always talked about, but let's not substitute to mental illness for evil.

There are some evil people out there.

We've seen that in Buffalo, we saw that in Parkland, we're now seeing it in Texas, but I believe though that, there needs to have be a lot more done.

I'm very happy with McConnell in Washington, willing to work with Democrats to see what other action can be taken.

- And we know that people who are mentally ill are more often victims of crime rather than perpetrators of crime.

Alex, what do you think of Nikki Fried, who's running for governor this year against two others.

She said that she wants to have a special session on gun violence.

If she were elected governor, she would sign an assault weapons ban.

If she was elected, what do you think of those ideas?

- Well, I think the ideas are worthwhile.

The question we always have to ask is, there are always plenty of ideas out there.

What can get implemented?

And the facts are, I never would've thought, Rob, that this year's election might turn on, to issues like gun control, and access to abortion.

Rather I'm into economics and property insurance we're gonna talk about, and also the cost of affordable housing but here we are, within a matter of months.

It seems to me that, and Mike talked about mental illness.

We know mental illness is a problem but it's also a problem in all these other countries of the world, that are not seeing mass shootings.

So let's get past mental illness and talk about, access to weapons, access to ammunition.

This 18 year old child not only bought one gun, but he bought two guns, and then he bought an enormous amount of ammunition.

Why is someone in that gun shop, not asking questions or not wondering.

And it gets back to something we were talking about earlier, which is there's profit to be made.

And the gun manufacturers are out there pushing guns.

- You both served a long time in Tallahassee.

How much power does the NRA or the gun manufacturers have in Tallahassee in the halls of the legislature?

- They have a lot of influence.

There's no question about that.

But you also have a lot of legislators on both sides of the aisle that believe in the Second Amendment, the importance of allowing people, law abiding citizens to own a gun.

This though sometimes just goes too far, and Alex is absolutely right.

What in the world, why anyone would sell this child, over 300 rounds of ammunition?

- That's how many he fired.

He had more.

- I'm also a supporter and a believer in the Second Amendment, but let's look at, this automatic weapon, and the damage that it does.

And even our police officers, they're going in there with handguns against somebody who's got this automatic weapon, that can literally blow apart a human body.

Now that's not what the Second Amendment was written for.

- I wanna read something from State Representative Randy Fine.

He sparked a controversy this week.

He put out a pair of tweets, that critics say amounted to threats against President Biden.

He says, "I have news for the embarrassment that claims to be our President.

Try to take our guns and you'll see why the Second Amendment was written in the first place."

And then Fine wrote in Twitter on Wednesday, nearly identical post and he referred to Biden as Trader Joe.

There are tough feelings about this, but when you say something about that, the President will learn why the Second Amendment is there.

How do take that?

- It cross the line.

- Yeah.

- It does.

- That is cross the line.

He may not agree with our President, but to use language like that.

That's why we have a problem in this country.

- And Biden is not suggesting that guns be confiscated.

- Well, I think that's key.

As a Republican you hear, and I've been concerned in my political career of Democrats or anyone wanting to take away from law abiding citizens their gun, that they legally purchased.

But it concerns me greatly when you have those that as soon as someone gets elected, they're going to take away your gun.

We hear this all the time.

I'm not aware of any legislation in Washington or Tallahassee for that matter, any state that's recommending, to take away a gun from someone who has purchased it legally, but what Representative Fine did is wrong and absolutely stepped over the line.

- And to get back to Marion Hammer.

She ruled- - Of the NRA.

- Of the NRA.

She ruled the halls of Tallahassee certainly when I was serving.

That was 10 years ago, but the NRA has issues and problems of its own.

And so I've seen their influence decline pretty substantially.

And to me, it's time for the people of this country, to stand up, and say they're going to elect people, 80% of the people, think that there should be some restrictions on gun purchases.

Whether it's waiting periods or magazines, and we have a bunch of elected officials who are totally ignoring the will of the people of this state and this country.

- In Florida real quickly, the tax collector offices, you can go ahead and apply for a renew, a concealed weapon permit.

In Florida you have to do fingerprinting.

There's a background check before you get that concealed weapon.

It's a deep background check.

I've seen where people have come into our office and doesn't understand why they're not getting a concealed weapon permit.

We of course refer them to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, but there's nothing wrong with having something in place to make sure that somebody who's buying this, is of sound mind but also, doesn't have a record of doing something that's gonna be evil.

- And Rob, I know we have to move on, but the fact that just a few weeks ago, our governor, DeSantis said that before he left office, he was going to ensure, that people could buy guns and have open carry, without any background checks or any responsibility.

He better shut his mouth.

- All right.

So we've all got two minutes left.

Both of you are experts on housing.

How do you think the legislature did this week in passing insurance reform legislation.

Are insurance rates for homeowners gonna go down as a result of what Tallahassee did this week?

Mike.

- Well, first of all, not immediately.

Even the sponsor himself, Senator Boyd, good man by the way, who's an insurance agent, made it very clear that if rates go down, homeowners are not gonna see them until at least 12, maybe 18 months.

I'm hoping that people can hold on until then.

They did some good things.

They did a $2 billion reinsurance fund which will help insurance companies without having to go outside to other companies across the waters to get reinsurance.

They'll be able to get it here.

However, the good part about that is, if they do participate in the reinsurance fund, it is required for them to reduce rates.

That's good.

There's also a $10,000 grant, that's gonna be given to people, if they're gonna use that to mitigate their home.

- Alex, what do you think?

Did they solve the problem?

- No, they didn't solve the problem.

Insurance is complicated, and they made good progress, but let's get into issues of insurance companies siphoning off their profits, to their sister companies, the taxpayers can't touch if the company goes insolvent, it means that we are picking up the price for this siphoning off.

So the there a lot of other things.

- So the company didn't necessarily fail because it couldn't get enough money and policies.

- Exactly.

- It failed because they siphon money.

- They siphon money off leaving them with not enough capital to withstand a storm or not enough reinsurance.

And then what happens is the state, as when I was a CFO, you take over that insurance company, you have to pay the claims, that's the way the law's written.

And then, it's the taxpayers who end up paying more.

- And then that's why these companies are called state firm of Florida.

- Yeah.

- Or state of Florida.

And that's why I'm a big supporter and I wish the legislature would've at least pushed a little bit that, if you're going to offer homeowner's insurance in Florida and you're offering property insurance, an auto insurance, that if you're gonna keep the auto, you also have to keep the property insurance policy.

Otherwise you provide nothing.

- It's always so great to talk to both of you about state politics.

Thanks for coming by the show.

- Thank you.

- Great to see you after all these months.

Okay, we will.

All right.

Thank you for joining us on "Florida this Week."

We hope you have a good Memorial day weekend, we leave you with the faces of the victims, lost to gun violence, in the past two weeks.

(soft piano music begins) (soft piano music continues)