The Coral Gables City Commission is poised to approve a mostly symbolic ban on the sale of assault weapons — there are no gun stores in the City Beautiful — even though state law prohibits cities from enacting gun restrictions and they could be removed from office.
Let’s keep our trigger fingers crossed.
Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli sponsored the measure, which is on the agenda as a first reading, in the wake of the Parkland school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High last month, where 14 students and three educators were gunned down by a 19-year-old 
with an AR-15. On Feb. 27, almost two weeks to the day, Valdes-Fauli led the commission in a 4-0 vote (Commissioner Vince Lago had left early, wink wink) to instruct a very unwilling city attorney to write the ordinance with the ban and bring it back to them.
This is pretty much campaign theater for a mayor who has already decided he wants another term next year. Valdes-Fauli has gotten quite a bit of ink and air time from this gimmick, so of course he’s going to ignore City Attorney Miriam Ramos’ warnings about this being an invalid act and the potential consequences — fines of up to $5,000 and removal from office.
Valdes-Fauli told any reporter who gave him a minute that he would gladly pay the price. “If that helps prevent the death of one of Coral Gables’ children, I would happily pay it,” he was quoted as saying in the Miami Herald.
Except it won’t save anyone’s life. Because, as we said in the first sentence, there is no gun store in Coral Gables. So, even if the law passed and remained valid, someone could buy an AR-15 in Coconut Grove and bring it to Miracle Mile. And, also, if he is removed from office it will likely be because the ordinance is illegal. So he’s done nothing.
Jack Thompson, a Gables resident and City Hall pain in the trolley, says that the mayor and his cohorts who vote yes on this must be removed from office by the governor. That it’s not a matter of maybe. That it’s not a choice.
“Should this renegade Coral Gables Commission actually pass its ordinance Tuesday, which calls for violating state law, please proceed with summarily removing all those voting to do so from their offices,” Thompson wrote over the weekend in a letter to Gov. Rick Scott. “The statute in question MANDATES their removal. It does not give you, Governor Scott, the option not to remove them, as the operative word in the removal statute is ‘shall,’ the most powerful command verb in the English language.”
Oh, please let him be right. Everybody but Lago, who has apparently told people he will vote against the ordinance Tuesday, is a waste of space up there anyway. Let’s clean house. Voters need a do over, too.
That’s not to say that Ladra isn’t for a statewide ban on assault weapons. But the way to do it is a binding referendum question on the ballot, which some people are trying to get for the 2020 election. Ladra would like to see it on this year’s ballot, while the momentum is there. This is what the city of Coral Gables should be doing. Pressuring their legislators in
Tallahassee and Washington D.C. to pass a wider ban. Because what good is a ban in Coral Gables if some nut can cross the street and get an AR-15 in West Miami or Coconut Grove.
That is the weapon that Nikolas Cruz used to kill 17 people on Feb. 14. It was purchased in a Coral Springs strip mall. Yet, you don’t see Coral Springs Mayor Skip Campbell, whose community is right next to Parkland, moving to pass an illegal ban that would mean nada. Instead, he wants to collect petitions to put it on the 2020 ballot and let voters do what our Republican legislators won’t.
Because the desire to ban these weapons of war and high-capacity magazines is very real. A Quinnipiac University poll done the week after the Broward school shooting, 67% of the respondents said they were in favor of a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons.
But what Valdes-Fauli and his yes people are doing is not so real. It’s theater. It’s a PR stunt to make them look good because gun control suddenly became the hip new thing for politicians to embrace as the teenagers becoming 18-year-old voters demand it.
And it could even be illegal.
“Coral Gables‘ City Attorney Miriam Ramos has publicly and rightly informed the Commission that she will not certify as legal its vote to violate this law,” Thompson wrote in his letter to the guv. “She is a lawyer who takes seriously both her oath upon becoming lawyer to obey and support the law and her oath of office as City Attorney. If this ordinance is passed, she will not sign off on it.”
Indeed, “the city attorney’s opinion regarding the ordinance remains unchanged,” says the memo in tomorrow’s agenda package.
“You have to love a client who pays its lawyer, with tax dollars, to give legal advice which it chooses to ignore,” wrote Thompson. “Sounds like we have a local manifestation of Trump.”
You know who else are lawyers? Valdes-Fauli and Commissioner Mike Mena. One would think they would know better.
“The Florida Bar has remedies for such brazen oath-breaking,” Thompson wrote, and Ladra has no doubt he is seeking their disbarment.
Coral Gables mayor, commissioners to defy state with assault weapons ban added by Ladra on
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