So Flo Guns - The Parkland Era

We’ve covered 500+ years of South Florida gun history in previous posts to get to what we are calling the Parkland Era. From Ponce DeLeon in 1513 at the beginning of the Musket Ball Era to today we see the evolution of our guns going from matchlocks, to flintlocks, to Winchesters, to the AR-15’s of today. Our times are marked by mass shootings and the realization that they can happen anytime, anywhere – with seemingly little to be done about it. The period is also marked by political polarization of what used to be a nonpartisan approach to gun regulation.

The iconic gun of this period is the AR-15 (see ArmaLite AR-15) with its military design, high-capacity magazines, sights and scopes, etc. Much of the American rifle industry is dependent upon the manufacture of these “sporting rifles” for their revenues, profits, stock prices, etc. Many will proffer that the AR-15 is not an actual battlefield weapon. Those would be the M-16 and M-4, the military version of the AR-15 (see ​AR15 vs M16 vs M4: What’s the Difference? - 80 Percent Arms). That’s beside the point. The high velocity rounds are the same and the carnage visited upon our kids that Valentine’s Day is the same as on the battlefields of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Watch 60 Minutes Overtime: The explosive force of AR-15 style rifles.

​The filming of So Flo Guns began with the MSD mass shooting in early 2018. We went to document the memorials and mourned with our neighbors. Living in Miami it was too close to home with my daughter (and So Flo Floods producer/cameraperson) Bobbie Richards the same age as the murdered students at the time. The frustration and remorse emanating from the massacre at one of our schools by a shooter with an AR-15 - and our apparent impotence to do anything about it - led to this documentary and its examination of how we got here. We spent the rest of 2018 documenting So Flo’s gun culture.

A few days later was Carmen Schentrup’s funeral, which I happened to attend through my association with the church she attended. It is our hope and intention to tell at least a small part of the Parkland heartbreak through her story. Hopefully, we can interview those close to her to better understand who she was, and the loss inflicted upon those that survive her. In so doing we will try to encapsulate the broader experience of the Parkland sufferers. We’re reliving it all again right now both locally and nationally as news coverage focuses on whether the shooter will receive the death penalty.

​Parkland had a significant impact on our politics – for a time anyway - as we see in our footage from the March for Our Lives protest on Miami Beach including School Superintendent Carvalho’s speech on March 24, 2018. There was an expectation that changes in gun laws were coming. Two months later we documented a Miami gun show where our gun ecology, economics, and theology thrive.

Different communities  in South Florida - like elsewhere - have different fears. The more-wealthy live in neighborhoods and gated communities that see little day to day shooting. Those in poorer communities live with ongoing gun violence to greater and varying degrees. All are affected by the fear guns present to parents sending their kids to school. South Florida schools instituted monthly code red drills in the aftermath of Parkland. This is something new and speaks to what is a kind of variant in our five-century old gun environment. But everyday shootings are just as lethal to our community and kids – and more prevalent. The reality is though that assault rifles get most of the attention as a target for regulation as we have all but given up on the prevalence of 9mm and other handguns on our streets.

​Mass shootings with assault rifles began decades ago. The 1989 Cleveland Elementary School shooting in Stockton, California saw a gunman shoot and kill five schoolchildren and wound 32 others with an assault rifle. This and other mass shootings led to the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 which expired 10 years later. 

​In the end, Florida’s, like the nation’s, gun politics and lobbying are the headwaters of the flow of guns. In Florida this is personified by Marion Hammer, The N.R.A. Lobbyist Behind Florida’s Pro-Gun Policies. We concluded our 2018 shoots interviewing the head of Florida Carry at their Line in the Sand Event in October in which they exercised their right to carry rifles and sidearms to South Beach as they went fishing on South Pointe Pier. 

​The time we live in, as exemplified by the Parkland tragedy, is marked by an awareness that the next shooting is almost certainly coming, with little hope of averting it. A bit like hurricanes guns are part of our human made environment - and we have learned to live with them. We just hope that we and our loved ones aren’t in the path of the next shooter. The terrifying fact of life is we never see the next one coming in spite of our efforts. At least with a hurricane we see it coming as the cone of concern closes in or moves away. If only such cones existed for the next mass shooting.