Orlando lawmaker perfectly sums up post-Parkland gun debate: 'Republicans were scared sh*tless’

The political columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, Scott Maxwell, wrote on Friday that "something different is happening in Florida" after the shooting massacre in Parkland.

"A new response to human slaughter," Maxwell suggested. "The politicians actually seem to care."

"Yet now, in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting, Republican leaders have joined Democrats in calling for action on guns, mental health and school security — issues they have flat-out rejected for years," he continued. "Florida’s governor is even taking on the NRA, calling for new gun restrictions and opposing ideas like arming teachers. Things like that simply don’t happen in Florida."

“That’s a big change,” Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando) said. “Usually after a mass shooting, it’s: Offer thoughts and prayers. Divert attention. Delay. And then do nothing.”

“The Republicans were scared sh*tless,” Smith said.

Maxwell noted gun control activists found "an unexpected ally of sorts: Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL), who was running for the U.S. Senate — and dealing with the reality that two of the deadliest, grisliest mass shootings in American history happened on his watch."

"He’d already responded to one mass slaughter with inaction. He couldn’t do so again," Maxwell noted. "Scott’s gun proposals still fall well short of what most people from both parties want with regards to universal background checks and bans on the sales of high-capacity weapons. But his actions were stronger than (and counter to) most anything he had done in the past."