Byron Donalds Blasts David Jolly Over Embrace of Gun Control

Florida’s election for governor won’t take place until next November, but even before the primaries have been held one Republican candidate is going after a potential Democratic challenger over his support for gun control.. 

Jolly’s a  former Republican turned anti-gun Democrat who seems to think he can win the pro-gun vote.

None other than David Jolly could fit that delusional bill.

When you say stuff just that stupid, you’re going to garner some attention, but as so many have learned over the years, not all attention is good attention. 

Despite it being very early in the gubernatorial race, GOP candidate Byron Donalds has already started taking shots at Jolly.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a gubernatorial candidate seeking to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), denounced his Democratic rival David Jolly for supporting sweeping gun control measures. 

Over the weekend, Jolly detailed the bones of his campaign for Florida governor during a series of interviews that elaborated on his stance on guns. Policies espoused by the Democratic candidate include requiring liability insurance for firearm owners, banning assault weapons, and mandating universal background checks on every gun transaction — even those from “father to son, grandfather to grandchild.”

Donalds, the only Republican in the race so far ahead of the 2026 elections, targeted Jolly over his positions in comments to the Washington Examiner that positioned the congressman as a candidate who will protect Second Amendment rights in his red state.  

“David Jolly is just another gun-grabbing radical leftist,” Ryan Smith, chief strategist for the Byron Donalds Campaign, said in a statement.

“He wants to impose the most sweeping gun control in Florida’s history. Byron Donalds is a fearless advocate for the Second Amendment. He is 100% pro-gun and will uphold and defend Floridians’ constitutional right to bear arms,” Smith continued. 

The comments from the Donalds campaign come in response to interviews Jolly conducted over the weekend, in which he articulated his stance on gun control, saying he was “actually for broader background checks than most Democrats.”

Seriously, Donalds is right. Jolly would take Florida from simply the most restrictive pro-gun state to a very restrictive anti-gun state overnight if he got his way. He wants universal background checks, including for inheritance. That’s bat-quano insane.

Donalds wants to be governor, too, so of course he’s going to take shots at Jolly, but the truth is that Jolly’s positions are so far out of step with even the lukewarm position the Florida GOP has largely maintained over the last few years that I can’t call it anything else other than delusional. It’s low-hanging fruit for Donalds and every other candidate in the state.

I won’t say it’s impossible for a Democrat to win the gubernatorial election. Gov. Ron DeSantis notwithstanding, I’m not seeing a lot of hardline pro-gun support in the state, for example, so I guess the right Democrat could come in and cause an upset.

I doubt Jolly is that Democrat, though.

Sure, he’d been a Republican, but this gun control stance is too far beyond anything that is likely to resonate with Floridians.

Donalds, on the flip side, is at least saying he’s pro-gun, that he supports the Second Amendment, and will defend it. We’re going to have to see how the rest of the race goes, but it seems clear Jolly is going to get trounced.