U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- As soon as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signaled he would support passage of a “Constitutional Carry” bill in the Sunshine State—perhaps during an upcoming special session—opponents ramped up a campaign of disinformation to include predictions of increased suicides to intimating armed law-abiding citizens will make the streets less safe.
And the New York Post editorialized fearfully about the potential for increased violence if the Supreme Court rules within the next two months that New York State’s pistol licensing scheme requiring proof of “proper cause” to get a carry permit is unconstitutional.
In every case, authors of these opinion pieces exercise what might generously be called faulty reasoning to make their arguments.
The New York Post editorial drumming up fear over an affirmative high court ruling in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen—challenging the state’s good cause requirement to exercise the right to bear arms essentially lumps honest citizens in with criminals who already carry guns illegally, without a permit.
“And make no mistake,” the editorial alarmingly warns, “New York, which is in the midst of an alarming surge in gun crimes, needs at least some restrictions on who gets to own and carry guns… The last thing New York needs is for every Tom, Dick, and Harriet on the street to be carrying.”
The newspaper is talking about law-abiding citizens wanting to be treated like law-abiding citizens, by not having to provide a good reason to exercise a fundamental right.
The editorial laments, “Last year, 488 people were murdered in the city alone, many killed by a gun. That’s a whopping 65% spike over 2018 when just 295 were slain. Over the year, 1,857 people were hit by gunfire, and the number of shooting victims this year through April 24, 441, is already up 8.6% over the same period last year.”
Who does the Post editorial board think is responsible for all of this violence? It certainly isn’t honest citizens who can’t carry guns. The illegally-armed thugs against whom good people wish to defend themselves since the police apparently can’t are doing all of the shooting.
Almost one year ago, The Economist observed, “Every American state requires you to have a license to drive a car, hunt or become a barber. Yet by the end of this year at least 20 states will allow you to carry a handgun in public without a permit.
Someone at The Economist needs a refresher course on the Constitution. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Barbering is not a fundamental right, but a skilled profession.
Bearing arms is a right specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Hunting is certainly an adjunct of the right to bear arms, but is not the primary purpose for the Second Amendment, and everybody but Joe Biden seems to know it.
Writing in the Miami Herald, retired police chief David Magnusson is apparently worried about open carry under the Florida proposal. He said there was “a constant discomfort” working in North Carolina, where open carry is legal. He says it is “far easier for someone with malicious intent to draw from their holster and shoot a police officer than it would be to reach into their waistband and pull out a firearm.”
That’s a remark certain to ignite a discussion, if not a debate.
Reacting to Gov. Brian Kemp’s signing of “Constitutional Carry” in Georgia last month, Dr. Robert Pawlicki, a semi-retired psychologist living in Savannah wrote in the Savannah Morning News, declared, “With this new legislation, we can expect more suicides. We can expect an increase in adolescent deaths by guns.”
It is not clear what carrying firearms by adults, without a license, has to do with either suicide or adolescent death involving guns.
Dr. Pawlicki correctly notes “approximately two-thirds” of annual firearms fatalities in this country are suicides, and that, “When Americans hear that guns kill over 40,000 people annually, their minds tend to go toward criminal violence.” It has become common for gun prohibition lobbying groups to lump all firearm-related deaths together, to create that impression of criminal violence.
“Beyond the horrible vision of many of my fellow citizens carrying guns in public,” the doctor writes, “I am most distressed over another outcome of this new law. I see the very real potential for an increase in suicides.”
Adding some perspective to all of this, a couple of men at the John Locke Foundation—Ray Nothstine and John Ferebee—wrote at Inside Sources that “multiple studies show no violent crime increases because of the growing constitutional carry trend. Law enforcement in West Virginia, a state that passed constitutional carry in 2016, is on record saying there is little to no policing issue with the change or an increase in violent crime.”
They were reacting to a comment from an anti-gun activist in Indiana who contended “permitless carry will put our communities in danger.”
But according to Nothstine and Ferebee, “Since 1997 when the study of right-to-carry (both shall-issue and permitless carry) laws’ impact on crime began, 40 of the 52 studies showed that the implementation of right-to-carry laws either did not increase or coincided with a decrease in violent crime.”
Perhaps the real fear is that DeSantis will have the chance to sign Constitutional Carry legislation making Florida the 26th state to adopt such a law. From that point forward, permitless carry activists will be able to argue that “a majority” of states have such provisions, and the gun prohibition lobby will be unable to argue otherwise.
Long story short, the gun control crowd is gradually losing ground, and momentum. Public information campaigns such as the one being sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation have exposed the nature of Biden’s gun control effort to millions of cable and satellite viewers. The tide is clearly turning on gun rights, and it may be key to causing a political tsunami in November, which the gun control crowd fears most of all.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
the more likely there is to be people caring guns the less chance criminals will try a crime that might get them killed, they will move on to un occupied dwellings and cars closed businesses,packages and mail boxes
Pretty simple thinking when you get down to it. Formed using reason, logic and common sense which is lacking in the heads of psychopathic control freaks!
Too many folks tend to forget that many violent crimes went down drastically when Florida first passed their concealed carry law since the criminals didn’t know who might now be legally carrying. EXCEPT in one very specific case – rental cars, particularly from airports were getting targeted for car jacking. The criminals figured (correctly) for the most part that an airline traveler was not likely to be a concealed carrier. Someone figured that detail out and suggested that the rental agencies take off any identifiers (like license plate frames intensifying the outlet) and pretty soon even that segment went down.… Read more »
Violence fell but yrs later FL was still among the most violent states for the reason you noted plus NRA as usual insisted on “gun free” zones anywhere that serves alcohol etc. Hence 50 dead in Orlando, 17 in Parkland.
Downvoters love NRA corruption and can’t handle the truth.
Dave, Thanks to the progressive monopoly on public education over the past 120 years our entire nation requires a refresher on the Constitution and our founding principles. I highly recommend the Patriot Academy programs like Biblical Citizenship to fill that gap. Get it, do it in your church or your living room with friends and relatives. You all would be amazed at what you did not learn about the real intellectual history of the American Republic thanks to the Soviet-style rewriting of American history. This rewrite affected your grandparents not to mention the current crop of impressionable and gullible public… Read more »
Only a moron doesn’t realize that older folks were social engineered to elevate the government over us Citizens, exactly what the Constitution and Bill of Rights warned us not to do. Drunks and gangsters said no to tyranny by law with automatic weapons, and then gun control came about to protect the government and its enforcers. The easiest example of social engineering that destroyed future generations Liberty is during ww2 only ten to twenty percent of government soldiers pressed their trigger on the enemy. That means out of ten to twenty soldiers only one or two was firing at the… Read more »
I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again. The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on… Read more »
Thanks for reading and sharing AMMOLAND News.
You may find this interesting. I wrote it back in 2004 for Media Bypass…How can we network? I had to remove the link because there is a technical issue related to it. I guess someone is trying to figure out who is reading it and making a list.
Speaking of that “education”…
Actually all of the states have it. It is even written into their constitutions. What we have is half of them VIOLATING the rights of their people. The people should organize and put the psychopathic control freaks on notice INCLUDING their ENFORCERS that they will not stand for it and resist in number against any infringement. And you know that isn’t going to happen. But wasn’t that the very thing that took place at Concord Green? Did King George send his enforcers to violate the rights of the colonial militias? And how did THEY respond? By sending letters to their… Read more »
Best “lobbying” is organizing to win elections, bounce pols who don’t listen, replace with pols who do.
Many do listen. But it’s an idiotic waste of time lobbying committed enemies as the major groups do, mindless “Action” alerts (often thinly disguised fundraising vehicles) to “Contact your reps” instead of focusing on vulnerable & therefore potentially receptive reps regardless of residence.
Downvoters are Chatroom Commandos, all mouth, no action.
Thanks Dave, gonna post this at other platforms I visit. Keep ringing the bell, Sir.
BFB: Thanks for sharing my stuff around, and for reading AMMOLAND News!
That’s what we do in Illinois. IGold – Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day. I’ve taken my daughters for the three hour drive from Chicago, then marched to the capital and made my voice heard.
All DeSantis needs to do is say that we are now going to follow these simple words..END OF STORY! “A well regulated militia being NECESSARY for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and BEAR arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. The LAW already exists!
Good point. DeSantis should
1) Say what you said.
2) Immediately pardon every citizen convicted of carry without a permit.
3) Ram a statute through special session respecting the right so no one is ever prosecuted for it again.
If he stopped at 1), innocent lives would still be destroyed by Oathbreaking cops, prosecutors, judges & juries, partially mitigated only if DeSantis & all succeeding govs kept pardoning them immediately, one after another.
Also raises the key issue of Fair & Speedy Trial by Fully Informed Jury of Peers, allowed to judge facts and the law & its application.
Florida has a problem. When Ohio Governor finally signed Constitutional Carry the NRA sent out an email about how many states now had CC and naturally took all of the credit. But the NRA never even mentioned FL and how CC was being stonewalled by the legislature.
It is my opinion that Marion Hammer is one of the biggest obstacles to CC in FL. Now over the years Hammer did some good things for FL as far as 2A is concerned, but her crowning achievement and signature legislation is the FL “shall issue” CWL law.
Florida Constitutional Carry won’t be Marion Hammer’s achievement. It’ll be in spite of her decades of obstruction. Once she can no longer sabotage it, she’ll endorse & take credit for it. Probly have one of her corrupt pet RINOs write it to ensure it’s still infested with “gun free” zones & Sabatini gets no credit.
Wilton “Red Flag” Simpson & Chuckmeat Brannon clearly did her bidding by blocking CC – or she wouldn’t praise & endorse them, while trashing CC author Sabatini.
I wonder why no Ammoland writers interview Sabatini about all this. Surely it would be a great article.
Downvoters are Oathbreakers and NRA trolls.
nra is the reason we cant build our own machine guns , I know most here will never machine an m14 receiver from a billet but for a hobby machinist like people that make or fix mechanical clocks cats meow
There are so many fun ways to build and convert a weapon to multiple fire.
HLB
an m1 garand or m14 receiver , real tricky , requires a great 3d thought process rotation for bolt clearances to move I made some scrap metal
Many ways to risk a 10-year prison sentence that could turn into a death sentence.
An acquaintance of mine who lives in England, his mother killed herself. No guns access there, apparently no pills or alcohol either. She tied a rope around the kitchen door outside knob and ran it over the top of the door, around her neck then jumped off the kitchen counter. If someone is determined to commit suicide, not having a gun WON’T stop them.
Same for homicide. Cain killed Abel with a rock. Or, you could strangulate someone with your bare hands. Do we need a permit for hands now?
ackshuuly there is no mention of the “instrument” Able used. Isn’t that interesting? And the punishment God brought upon Abel? HE was banned. Not the tool he used.
Perhaps there is an authoritative pattern here?
God also <ANDATES that whenever someone kills someone else in cold blood, no provocation, the killer MUST die by the hand of man. These whigers want to take OUR guns etc away but REFUSE to deal with those who kill and maim. Twisted “logic” there.
That’s a reasonable suggestion. Be sure to notify local media in advance, and let AMMOLAND know of any plans you formalize and finalize.
Thanks for reading and sharing AMMOLAND News.
It is funny that the “Economist” would publish something that foolish. Apparently, the “Economist” is unaware of the US Constitution and the God given, natural rights that it protects.
rights and rules are confusing to them
Yet these same posers remain uttelry silent whenever anyone mentiones the NINTEY THOUSAND deaths from illegal drug overdose in the US. Nor do they ever mention the millions of times each year a citizen introduces his personal weapon into a lethal situation and STOPS the crime in progress, without firing that weapon. John Lott has establishd, from public records that for every single incident where a gun is used defensively by honest citizens and fired to stop the threat, 1700 MORE incidents occur where the gun is introduced and NOT fired. These crybabies on a winge need to fall back… Read more »
Good comment and good source material!
just imagine 10% of the people in nyc buy a gun crime nose dives ,people stop looking other way when police steal a meal or snack expect police to follow same rules they do no speeding texting while driving …..cant have that
Can’t writers to take enough responsibility for the pulpit to include ACTION info?
Talk without action = echo chamber bloviation.
Does DeSantis read Ammoland? Unlikely. So copy him on these articles, urge him to Gator Done as a key priority in spcl session, up there with mandates & Disney backing ‘teachers’ who sexually groom kids.
@Florida4Ron
@2024Ron
@RonDeSantisFL
@GovRonDeSantis
[email protected]
[email protected]
850-717-9337
Don’t have to live there. His staff knows we’re potential donor-supporters & the oath is to the USA, not just Florida.
I wrote him an email a number of weeks ago and I live in Mississippi.
HLB
the post editorial board is demonstrating its ineptitude with that article. they provide no data/statistics to support their pearl clutching claim. why don’t the call for the police to remove criminals (drug dealers/gang bangers) from the streets, that would go a long way to reducing street violence. unfortunately many suicidal persons use a firearm to kill themselves, but do you think if there were no firearms they wouldn’t find another way to commit suicide? none of the blood running in the streets progressives have pontificated have come true when concealed carry or free carry has been passed in any state.… Read more »
Wow with the amount of people dying from guns, and those that are dying from other forms of death, accidents, and those who die from natural causes, the rate of births in this country can’t replace those who are deceased. Therefore by using simple math (not what they teach now) how do we have 350 billion people in this country?
I don’t believe the numbers game.
Million. Three hundred and fifty million. Three hundred to three hundred and ten are legal.
hoss – good point but ya added an extra zero to your population count 😉
The numbers keep ballooning due to all of the illegals that get counted – and they are not holding back on their birth rates.Back in the day the ‘official’ count was 11 million and only recently has that been upped to around 30 million. Oh and that was before the democRATs conned Reagan into ‘granting’ amnesty to some 3.5 million..
Sadly, Reagan wasn’t conned. He aggressively pushed amnesty as the “moral” thing to do. He was no fool. He knew the “amnesty now, congress enforces later” was a dumb cover story.
Congress writes laws. It doesn’t enforce. POTUS does.
Reagan had ample budget, manpower, constitutional & statutory authority to evict the invaders without a bogus sucker deal. He just didn’t want to. Ike did it with just 1075 Border Patrol agts & a tiny budget. The difference: Ike wanted to do it, didn’t think amnesty was moral, make no excuses, honored his oath with what he had without any ‘deals’.
Reagan drank the kool-aid in comifornia 1986 fire arms protection act ,have to love nra stab others in the back rather than stand your ground
Yep. Talked a good game mostly, but that’s it. Killed the small-gvt cause jumping on the “Laffer Curve”, cutting taxes TO ENABLE BIGGER GVT. Every dept grew. Never tried to cut any spending. Broke promises on Dept of Education, Dept of Energy etc.
Three zeros. 🙂
Why do you think Reagan was conned by the Democrats?
“Therefore by using simple math (not what they teach now) how do we have 350 billion people in this country?”
Kinda funny.
2 orders of magnitude off, but it will be over 3B if DemComs, “Libertarians” & “cheap labor” RINO-globalists keep having their way.
I was just foolin’ about.
I was mainly interested in GomeznSA’s comment about Reagan. I’m interested in the history of people illegally entering the U.S. and was curious about the basis for his comment.
His poke at hoss was funny and hoss’s poke at young people was funny (given their comments).
Not all elderly people are bad at math (some are geniuses).
Some elderly people would have a better, more balanced, view of young people if they got out and interacted with some.
the new guesstimate for the number of illegals is between 30-40 million it is based on public interaction (police,fire,hospitals) and some formula for those with no interaction social science math… more hocus pocus than math
The government is not good at counting what they don’t want counted.
mostly from other places none with any education
just a few times more than the calculated carrying capacity of the planet
typical down vote for a fact, yes i know there are some extreme possibility calculations giving each person ten square feet that say huge numbers beyond the 10-20billion which is upper end of sustainable range (water and ecosystems marginal ) full recycling no other predators, only efficient food production soylent green at some point would be a reality too many people means no wasted resource
No way earth could ‘handle’ 20B under socialism, but I’m sure it could under globalist ‘free-market’ neo-feudalism. Quality of life, liberty, security, privacy, dignity & pursuit of happiness would be nominal. Already deteriorating rapidly in the US at 350m.
“Driving is a privilege, not a right.” I see this over and over and over from different sources. Who told us this? Driving is a RIGHT that is being infringed on by making us get “drivers licenses” and license plates every year. Why you may ask do I claim it is a right rather then a privilege? It is actually easy. IF THERE WERE NO “GOVERNMENT” could I do this without damaging someone else in their life, liberty or property? Since the answer is YES, it is a RIGHT. The interesting thing is that the LICENSE they issue actually according… Read more »
The old county dirt road runs through our property. In some places the banks on each side are 20 feet high due to wear. It had been in use for several hundred years but not for the last 100. Nobody was stopped and made to produce a license when traveling that road.
HLB
Yeah, why weren’t licenses required of horse drawn wagons and horse back riders? Because government had not thought of it yet.
Governments and courts call it a license because they want us to believe that it is permission from the state that can be granted and withdrawn!
So really, if the rest of the people who are license conditioned don’t put up too much fuss, we could just stop getting all the licenses and use the 2nd amendment to protect ourselves from the license purists enforcers.
HLB
Not quite sure what you are saying. I’m just giving you the legal concepts. License, the power of the state to grant or revoke, was substituted for our God given, natural Right, by the courts and then, later, by the legislatures.
But you are right, the great majority of people are conditioned to it.
Yes, the people who are conditioned to it can be re-conditioned to not support it. That way I don’t have to submit my papers to the water patrol for my 12 foot sailboat.
HLB
It was especially disheartening to read this hysterical editorial in the NY Post, which is an otherwise rational, conservative publication. I suspect, they wanted to appear balanced on this very divisive issue, since their base is in deep blue NY.
Interesting observation.
Thanks for reading and sharing AMMOLAND News!
conservative by new york city standards is moderate/liberal to anyone else joe manchin is a tea party conservative in comparison
There has not been one state in this Great Nation, that has adopted Constitutional Carry (VT never ‘adopted’ it) without some group claiming that it would turn that state into “The Wild West”.
We’re right at 50% of American States and. . . wait for it. . .
it’s never happened.
You are so right. All the anti-gunners have is fear. Bad guys ALREADY carry without permits. Gun prohibitionists simply don’t make the connection.
Thanks for reading and sharing AMMOLAND News.
There is more deaths from drug overdoses than from guns but we don’t hear the uproar from these same people.
China is selling the death to Mexican cartels who sneak it in to the U.S., and peddle it in all the states, yet we don’t hear the blame of the president not having a secured border where these drugs are coming in.
Are they really afraid of guns or is it they are afraid of DeSantis running for president.
That’s because the powers-that-be in the Western world worship civilian deaths. The more there are, the merrier the ones in charge become. OFC, they know better than to admit to this, so they cover it up with pretty speeches about the sanctity of life, and other fictions. Pablum news stories about kids with ice cream and chipmunks… and then they go murder thousands more. They trust in their propaganda arms to cover this all up. But it’s so obvious now that even the sheeple cannot help but see it.
First it is the New York Post anything written is slanted towards democratic support nothing new .Comparing the governor of Florida to the governor of New York is just plain stupid. Outside the 5 boros there are lot of gun owners and hunters that pay dearly to own and carry a firearm. Upstate New York everybody who lives in the mountains hunts they still close schools on opening day of deer season. NYC is a cesspool run by democrats who are never held accountable for that actions. Ask the last mayor’s wife of NYC where the money is she misappropriated… Read more »
Sorry, your depiction of the NY Post is wrong. Since the acquisition of the newspaper by the Murdoch group, and to some extent previously, it has been a standard in bedrock conservativsm.
The Murdochs are anti-gun, deluge-migration, “cheap-labor” globalists, pals with Bloomberg, fans of 1-way “free trade”, aided The Big Steal in 2020. Hardly bedrock conservatives.
But Rupert knows a profitable niche when he sees one, so he’ll pretend conservative enough to line his pockets.
Downvoters love Michael Bloomberg
do you think the legally armed police are responsible for all the shootings, or they picked wrongly and some of their armed friends ?? these are the only people they have not taken guns from , maybe they should take theirs too no legal guns in the city; I bet that would work out great , gangs would likely stop robbing individuals when they could rob banks and jewelry stores without fear