Bearing Arms reported on the bill CS/HB HB 1437 and some folks in the comments had an issue trying to grasp what it means and fixes. Florida law is inflexible (so far) about carrying in School and at the same time allows you to carry in you place of worship.
The problem is when both are combined in the same property. So far nothing has happened (probably there were a couple of events that we did not hear about and were kept under wraps) but eventually we are going to have to deal with an otherwise Law Abiding Citizen caught carrying in Church that has a school in the property which is verbotten.
Here is a perfect example: Even though you are supposed to legally carry in church, you cannot even step on the property because there is also a school in it That big fat square of land is legally a Gun Free Zone. And this is a very common combination wherever you have a concentration of Catholics such as South Florida.
The bill will allow you to go to Mass or Temple or Mosque or Church and return home duly and legally armed even if it is school property.
My church is like that except that they’re not detached and separate buildings – you can walk from school to sanctuary and back without going outside.
Until the stuff started about not carrying in church started, I thought that since the school is never in session when the sanctuary was in use that meant there wasn’t a school on premises and I always carried in church. Someone, probably you, convinced me that it didn’t matter, it was still a school. Just like how the numbers the anti-gun folks cite for school shootings include two gangs shooting at each other at 3AM and one is in the school’s parking lot.
Now I don’t carry in church anymore. I know we have an armed security staff and I see them open carrying. It’s still uncomfortable.
One of my favorite conversations was with the facilities admin after a school board meeting. The meeting was held in the local high school.
We were talking and a teacher came up and was talking about how horrible it was that people with CCW’s could carry guns in the school.
Her concern was that she wouldn’t be able to talk to parents because “A parent could get angry and shoot her” and how “Having a gun on school grounds is dangerous.”
I was thinking to myself as she ranted about how parents couldn’t be trusted to hold their temper “So you think that having a gun will make the parent MORE dangerous? What’s to keep that same parent from attempting a one punch knock out of your obnoxious opinionated ass?”
The entire time she was ranting about how easy it was to spot those dangerous people with guns and how easy it would be to stop them from coming into the school, I was standing within hands reach of her. Carrying.
The infringers never think through their arguments. It is always about “common sense” and “we all know” and “its obvious” types of arguments. And as soon as you start destroying those arguments, they turn to ad hominem attacks.