Permitless carry and gun sanctuary cities. Visit Florida at your own risk — it’s a blast! | Opinion
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As Florida beach cities bemoan the lawlessness of young people bringing guns to spring break and vow to crack down on the partying to break the cycle of violence, the Florida Legislature just gave cover to hanging out with a gun.
In a 27-13 vote, the Senate made it legal Thursday for Floridians to carry concealed firearms without undergoing any training or getting a permit — making life easier for criminals and the job more dangerous for law enforcement.
All Republicans — except, to her credit, Miami’s Sen. Ileana Garcia — voted to liberalize the state’s already-lax gun laws.
Divorce class is required in Florida for couples with children, but parents can handle guns around their kids without any instruction.
This is a state where people aren’t required to register guns like they do cars or house alarms. There’s no paperwork, no background check involved when gifting or privately selling guns. Only in gun shop and gun show sales do buyers undergo basic scrutiny.
And now, not even first-time gun users will be required to learn how to use a gun, online or in a gun range, to carry a concealed gun around the rest of us.
Their new right puts the rest of us at greater risk of dying as a result of their incompetence.
There were no issues to solve here other than the greed of those peddling gun sales. But lawmakers urgently tackled this non-problem, emboldening hotheads to carry on with mayhem.
On DeSantis’s desk
The permitless carry bill, CS/HB543, now heads to Gov. DeSantis, a fan of even worse, open-carry. He will be all too giddy to sign it into law. He was the bill’s chief proponent, although, hypocritically so — the governor doesn’t want guns at his events.
Remember, he got caught asking the city of Tampa to ban firearms at his election party — and to take the blame for it so he didn’t have to?
DeSantis had nothing to worry about.
“Historic NRA Win: Constitutional Carry Passes in Florida,” the organization boasted in a press release sent, in its own words, “moments” after the vote. They’ll shower DeSantis with funds for his likely presidential run.
But for the safety at major events — like spring break in South Beach — the new law foreshadows new trouble.
Although there’s talk that it could be possible to fence in an event, call it a private party and prohibit guns — like at DeSantis’ election event — “the gun law passed by the Legislature allowing concealed weapons with no permit or training will make 2024 in South Beach a nightmare,” said Stuart Blumberg, a 77-year resident of Miami Beach and founder of the Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association.
Agreed, said Michael Grieco, a former Miami Beach commissioner and ex-state Rep. , a criminal defense attorney who carries a concealed weapon: “It’s just going to exacerbate the problem. I’m a Democrat and gun-owner, and this bill passed scares the crap out of me. As a father who drives his kid to school every week,” he said, pausing, “now anyone can just go buy a gun with only some nonsensical, lighthearted background check.”
Gun ‘sanctuary’
Unfortunately, this bill isn’t the only lethal news making the NRA happy in the Gunshine State, which becomes the 26th in the nation to make concealed-gun ownership cheaper and easier.
Now counties and cities are declaring themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuary” panaceas to buck federal gun-control regulation. Manatee County, on Florida’s West Coast became the latest to do so Tuesday at a public meeting in Bradenton.
In defense of lunacy, the commissioner who introduced the resolution, Jason Bearden, shamelessly quoted the Bible and American icons Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Wrapping himself in godliness to defend the right to take lives is abominable.
But it gets twice the brownie points with GOP voters.
That another school shooting rocked the country — three innocent 9-year-olds gunned down at a Christian school in Nashville — means nothing to Republicans.
The gun affliction — yes, it’s a sickness to love guns more than kids — has been on the rise in Florida where children are in the line of fire, whether at the hands of mad, gun-obsessed killers or ruthless gangsters and drug-dealers.
Some 40 out of 67 counties in Florida have adopted pro-Second Amendment resolutions that stand against any federal or state laws that place restrictions on gun ownership. Legally meaningless, the rhetoric nevertheless sends the message that guns matter more than people.
Because the victims of the massacre on Valentine’s Day 2018 of 17 students, teachers and staffers, their future stolen by an AR-15 rifle, don’t count enough with Florida’s Republican lawmakers. What does? Keeping the gun lobby satisfied, sales churning and campaign chests flush with NRA blood money.
Because the horrible toll — 49 people killed and 53 wounded at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando — isn’t in the cone of concern of state leaders. In fact, legislators would rather shame and dehumanize them by passing anti-gay legislation.
For lives are lost and maimed, Republicans only have facile and worthless thoughts and prayers.
And, for future victims, as certain as the orange sunrise in Florida, all they have is: Buy a gun! Buy another! We make it easy! We condone it!
DeSantis and the GOP paint a pretty picture of “freedom” in Florida and the right to self-protection. But the ugly truth is they favor politics that abet more violence, more death.
If only Florida’s vigilant moms, on the lookout for kids possibly seeing a penis in Renaissance art and not reading about a Black girl in the Jim Crow era, cared as deeply about the danger of readily available guns.
