Who would have thought that Florida's junior senator, Richard Lynn Scott, could be the right man to bring a gun safety measure to the U.S. Senate and rally colleagues to enact the reform? He has the experience and the credibility to do it.

"Sitting with families who have lost a parent, a child, a spouse, can have a profound effect on anyone who sees first-hand the devastation of their loss," Scott wrote in a 2019 opinion piece for The Washington Post. "I know this from personal experience...."

The question is, will the senator step up and use his experience gained from being Florida's chief executive following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting or be content to stand pat as a partisan and politicize the issue?

Our hope springs eternal.

Yes, the thought of Scott working on meaningful legislation to address gun violence is a longshot. He remains a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, to the point of defending gun rights "at any cost," according to his 11 Point Rescue America Plan for Republicans. He also didn't raise much confidence in promoting bipartisanship last week, when he called Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Twitter a "liar and a hack," after Schumer criticized a bill Scott had offered to bolster school security programs.

Yet, Scott remains a senator who truly understands the anguish a school shooting can produce and the hard decisions needed to address it.

As Florida governor, he bucked the gun lobby and signed legislation that raised the age limit to buy a firearm from 18 to 21, imposed a three-day waiting period on most long gun purchases and established a red flag law that allows police to confiscate weapons from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others.