Want to carry a gun? Go ahead. No background check. No training. No registration. Take it anywhere you like. Hide it or carry it openly. Your call.
Take it to work. To church. To campus. A sporting event. A state park. Use it as a convenient place to rest your hand while arguing with a store clerk about return policies.
Do you have a history of violence related to mental illness? A felony record? An injunction ordering you to stay away from someone who is scared you might hurt them? If so, you’re not supposed to have a gun, much less carry one in public. But it may get a lot harder to catch you.
This is a glimpse of what life may be like in Florida if lawmakers pass the permitless-carry gun law Gov. Ron DeSantis is about to unveil. We haven’t seen it yet, but most of the above changes have been proposed in Florida before and came close to becoming law. All of them are permitted in at least one other state.
Support for sensible laws
In 15 other states, permitless carry laws (which the gun lobby is cynically rebranding as “constitutional carry”), erase any state requirement to obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm. It almost always incorporates a concept known as “open carry” which allows guns to be carried unconcealed. Many states have included language that relaxes other laws on gun purchases, bans on sales of bump stocks and other enhancement devices and age-related restrictions.
DeSantis hasn’t been specific about which existing laws he would target, and he can’t go after federal laws, including the background check required when a gun is purchased from a licensed seller. But when our governor proposes legislation intended to please his far-right base, his motto seems to be “Go big or go home.”
Some expect him to call for repeal of modest reforms passed in the weeks just after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, such as an age limit of 21 for weapons purchases.
Here’s what the governor is ignoring: Most Floridians want rational restrictions on the availability of guns.
They don’t want to have to consider whether someone is locked and loaded before shush-ing them in a theater or staring them down over the last space in a crowded parking lot. They don’t want private-property owners forced to allow guns to be carried inside their businesses.
They don’t support the availability of assault-style weapons, high-capacity magazines or other technology that can enhance a firearm into a weapon of fast and lethal destruction. Americans have repeatedly said they want guns kept away from people with a history of violence. They want to close loopholes for private weapons sales and gun shows.
In a nationwide Quinnipiac University poll last year, 89% of Americans (and 84% of Republicans) said they support background checks for all gun buyers. In a 2020 Gallup poll, 91% of Americans said gun laws should be at least as strong as they are now and 57% said they should be stricter.
People understand the deadly correlation between lax gun laws and death. Of the 15 states with a firearm-related mortality rate of more than 20 deaths per 100,000 people, 14 are rated “F” by the Giffords Center To Prevent Gun Violence. Florida’s firearms death rate is 13.7.
If DeSantis gets his way, expect that number to go up. And understand that it’s not just a number. These are lives — 3,041 in Florida in 2020 — cut short in the most violent of ways. Those who died in the massacres in Parkland and at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 2016. Young men who end their own lives with a bullet. People slaughtered in acts of domestic violence or drug-related warfare. Children who find guns that have been improperly stored.
Protect Floridians from shattering violence
Before they shred Florida’s gun laws, DeSantis and his allies in the Legislature should hear from Floridians who support the Second Amendment but want common-sense guidelines intended to keep everyone safe.
They should listen to the survivors of mass shootings, such as the Parkland students. They should hear from Florida’s law enforcement leaders such as Orange County Sheriff John Mina, who has been outspoken about the toll of gun violence and reiterates that he strongly opposes an open carry law. It takes courage, especially in an election year, to stand up to a governor who’s both popular and vengeful, and who has led efforts to provide bonuses and better pay for officers. But sheriffs and chiefs should put the safety of their officers and the public first.
So should DeSantis. We ask him to remember a sunny day nearly three years ago, when he and his wife Casey visited the new memorial for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting that claimed 49 lives — at the time, the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in modern American history.
“Florida will always remember these precious lives,” DeSantis wrote on the memorial wall. Has he forgotten?
This isn’t about scoring partisan points. It’s about suppressing violence and saving lives, about fighting fear and preventing heartbreak. Floridians should make it clear where their priorities lie — and politicians should stop scheming to nourish their ambitions with bloodshed.
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