The Right to Carry Firearms

          As the Florida State Legislature considered the bill that led to its Right to Carry law, firearms ownership opponents predicted that catastrophe would follow if average people were allowed to have handguns in public. Florida would become the "GUNshine State", politicians warned. Media reports forecast vigilante justice and Wild West shootouts on every street corner. "{A} pistol-packing citizenry will mean itchier trigger fingers ... South Florida's climate of smoldering fear would flash like napalm when every stranger totes a piece, and every mental snap in traffic could lead to the crack of gunfire", one newspaper hypothesized.

          Florida's Right to Carry bill was endorsed by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement, Florida Sheriff's Ass'n., Florida Police Chiefs Ass'n. and other law enforcement groups, and the BATF's chief agent in the state acknowledged that permits to carry firearms were not a crime problem. Yet one police chief opposed the Right to Carry bill was reported to have told the state governor that if the carrying bill became law, he would "take appropriate steps... he would arm his officers with machine guns".

          Florida's homicide rate has dropped 22% since 1987, while the national homicide rate has risen 15%, testament to the irrationality of the anti-gunners' claims. State Rep. Ron Silver, who opposed the Right to Carry bill, admitted in 1994, "I am pleasantly surprised to find that I think it's working pretty well... We have found very few instances whereby (permit holders) have actually gone out and committed a crime afterwards". Of 258,193 carry permits issued in Florida through Nov. 30, 1994, only 18--less than 0.007%--have been revoked because permit holders committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used).

          "Right to carry" detractors incorrectly claim that even though Florida's homicide rate declined since 1987, total violent crime (including aggravated assault, robbery and rape, as well as homicide) went up--a claim that tells more about anti-gunners' credibility than about the results of Florida's Right to Carry law. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has warned that comparisons of aggravated assault, robbery, and rape before and after 1988 cannot be legitimately made, since Florida changed its method of compiling violent crime data in that year.

          Furthermore, in Florida, as in the U.S., 70% of violent crimes do not involve guns. Violent crime rates, therefore, don't always reflect violent firearm-related crime trends. According to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Reports (1993), firearms were used in the four categories of violent crime as follows: Aggravated Assault (50% of all violent crimes)--firearms used in 25%; Robbery (34% of violent crimes)--firearms used in 42%; Rapes (5% of violent crimes)--firearms used in an estimated 5%-10% (survey data); and Homicides (1.3% of violent crimes)--firearms used in 70%.

          Despite declining firearm accident trends at a time when reliance upon firearms for self-defense is on the rise, those who oppose Americans' right to carry claim that citizens cannot be trusted to handle their guns safely and responsibly. And despite award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck's findings that firearms are used for self-protection more than 2.1 million times annually, and the Dept. of Justice's findings that 34% of felons have been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim," anti-gun activists claim that attempting to use a firearm in self-defense is likely to result in the firearm being used against its owner. (The Justice Dept. study, published as Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms , by Professors James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, also found that 40% of felons have not committed one or more particular crimes for fear their potential victims were armed.)

          Anti-gun groups' spokesmen have even claimed that women should not resist attackers, and that the Constitution does not protect the right of self-defense. They attempt to discourage women, in particular, from including firearms as part of their overall crime-prevention planning by claiming that a very small number of strangers who criminally attack women are every fatally shot by them. The deceit in the claim is, of course, obvious: Approximately 99.99% of defensive gun uses are not fatal shootings--criminals are usually frightened off, held at bay, or non-fatally wounded. Additionally, not all criminals who attack women are complete strangers to them.

          Florida's landmark law is now considered a model for similar proposals that have since been enacted or considered in other states.