Anyone with good sense in Florida is dreading July 1.
That’s the day when the state starts allowing people over the age of 21 to carry a concealed weapon without a permit and without any gun training — at all.
It’s the terrible law that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the complicit Legislature pushed through this session as they piled aboard the DeSantis-for-president train, intent on giving the governor the rightest of far-right of platforms to run on, in the hope of siphoning support from Donald Trump.
Florida isn’t the only state to do it. In fact, it’s the 26th, joining Kentucky, Alabama, Maine and Texas, among others.
But in a state that spawned the “Florida man” meme, lowering restrictions on guns is crazy. And scary.
You don’t have to look far to see why. Just a few weeks ago, on June 15, a Dunedin man emptied his assault rifle at a pool cleaner he thought was an intruder.
It was around 9 p.m. ET, and the man and his wife were watching a movie when they heard noises coming from their patio and saw a man walking around their pool. They said they yelled at him to go away and told deputies that they didn’t recognize him.
The wife, sensibly, called 911. The husband got his gun. He saw a flashlight and fired into the back yard — from behind his couch, through closed blinds.
It was their 33-year-old pool cleaner who had been cleaning their pool for at least six months and was running behind schedule.
He wasn’t hit by a bullet, only glass and shrapnel. And of course, he ran. But the homeowner, with the blinds closed, thought someone was still outside. So, as video footage shared by the local sheriff shows, almost a minute after the cleaner ran from the pool deck, the man emptied the magazine of his rifle into the back yard. He shot a total of 30 rounds in about 90 seconds. Stray bullets were found on the shuffleboard court behind the couple’s home.
Will the homeowner face charges? Under Florida’s existing “stand your ground” law, which allows a homeowner to fire at someone he thinks is a threat, apparently not.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office offered the right assessment of the situation in a June 26 news conference: “It’s probably one of those things that I would call lawful but awful.”
And now we will have “permitless carry” in Florida. With it, no doubt, will come more “lawful but awful” situations. And deadly ones, too.
Can’t wait for July 1.
