Florida moves toward permitless carry; Left freaks

FPI / February 9, 2023

Florida may become the 26th state to allow its citizens to carry firearms without a government permit.

The right to bear arms is “central to our freedom,” said Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, who introduced the bill on Monday.

The Left is blowing a gasket.

MSNBC's Wajahat Ali, who claims the move is driven by "racial anxiety," also stresses the dangers of permitless carry "by pointing to incidents that are wholly unrelated to the prospective law," David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist and nationally syndicated columnist, noted on Feb. 7.

The Newtown Action Alliance argues that “constitutional carry” — the term Second Amendment advocates often use to describe permitless carry — isn’t a real thing because the “constitution didn’t give anyone the right to carry guns publicly without permits, background checks, or training.”

The Left seems clueless to the fact that permitless carry does not mean citizens get to skip background checks.

"Floridians who purchase a gun, whether they plan to carry the firearm or not, fill out the same NICS forms and are subjected to the same criminal checks," Harsanyi noted. "Newtown knows this, but as with the 'universal background check' canard, the claim is meant to create the perception that mass murderers would be allowed to stroll into Wal-Marts and pick up their machine guns without any FBI check."

Harsanyi adds that "the outrage over the permitless carry bill is, as one expects, already hysterical, emotional, and largely fact-free. Since criminals and mass shooters tend to ignore paperwork, the law is a reasonable way to ensure lawful Floridians are able to defend themselves and their communities."

Additionally, Harsanyi continued, "yes, the Second Amendment specifically protects the right of Americans to 'carry' a gun. You remember the part that says 'to keep and bear Arms'? Until the dictionary is changed to comport with contemporary leftist rhetoric on the issue (and I suppose if it can ignore objective reality and redefine 'woman,' why not?) one of the definitions of 'bear' is to 'carry someone or something.' "

It was Dick Heller who "took his famous case to court because D.C. had restricted him from carrying a firearm to and from his job as a security guard," Harsanyi noted. "The Heller decision itself found that the Second Amendment 'guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.' "

The word “carry” makes 70 appearances in the Heller decision.

Harsanyi concluded by pointing out that the 25 states that have already passed permitless carry laws "have experienced no negative changes. Not even the RAND Corporation could find evidence that gun reforms had altered crime rates. The study mirrors others going back to at least 2004. The real problem for Newtown and Giffords is that allowing citizens to legally carry not only threatens to demystify ownership but also debunks their scaremongering on the ground. They want to make firearms harder to own. Not only for criminals. For everyone."

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