Governor Ron DeSantis angrily lashed out at an audience member attending a Jacksonville event Thursday morning, after the man, expressing his upset at murders of Black people including the recent racist and targeted mass shooting in that city, told the Florida Republican, “You have allowed people to hunt people like me.”
Late last month in Jacksonville a white gunman “with a swastika-emblazoned assault-style rifle killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville,” just after visiting a private historically Black university (HBCU), as CNN reported. Federal officials are investigating the mass shooting as a hate crime.
The Florida governor, running for president, was joined at the event by his controversial Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who later told reporters the man who was escorted out of the room after being berated by DeSantis, was “crazy” and “insane.”
The man said “he didn’t ‘agree’ with all the Governor’s policies, specifically regarding the gun laws that allow ‘weapons to be put in the street’ brandished by ‘immature and hateful people,'” as Florida Politics reported.
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Seconds into his remarks to the governor, DeSantis. appearing uncomfortable, interjected after being told, “Trayvon Martin was not the first.”
“Well, first of all, I did not allow anything, with that” DeSantis said.
“Well, listen,” the governor continued, as the man repeatedly asked him to let him finish his remarks.
“Excuse me, I’m not gonna let you accuse me of committing criminal activity. I am not going to take that. I am not going to take that,” DeSantis, raising his voice, said loudly to applause from what appeared to be a mostly white audience.
“So, you said you want to have a civil conversation,” DeSantis quickly and angrily continued, repeatedly pointing his finger.
The governor, citing a mental health law, appeared to suggest the Jacksonville mass shooter should not have been allowed the assault rifle he used to slaughter the three Black victims.
“That guy was Baker Acted,” DeSantis shouted. “He should have been ruled ineligible, but they didn’t involuntarily commit him.”
“Please allow me to continue, sir,” the man urged.
“No, no. There is the truth,” DeSantis stressed. “Everyone doesn’t have their own truth.”
“You don’t get to come here and blame me for some madman,” DeSantis continued. “That is not appropriate and I’m not going to accept it.”
“You have allowed people to hunt people like me in broad daylight,” the audience member, putting his palm to his chest, told the governor.
“Oh, that is nonsense. That is such nonsense,” DeSantis argued as staffers approached the man and began to escort him out of the room.
“We’ve done more. We’ve done more to support law enforcement in this state than anybody and throughout the United States. Our crime rate in Florida is at a 50-year low. We have enacted, we have enacted policies so that people have a chance to live in safety. We have attracted people to come to this state, in large part because we’ve had a commitment to public safety. So the notion that somehow we’re not supportive of safety is absurd.”
Last year The New York Times reported, “While Florida’s crime rate fell to a 50-year low in 2021, crime reporting was incomplete and provisional after a switch in how law enforcement agencies reported data. The crime rate that year included data from just 59 percent of agencies in Florida.”
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