The whole panic comes from an article in the Florida Current with the misleading title: Bill would ease obtaining gun permits. If you read it, you’ll soon find out that the only thing happening is that they want to expand the number of places where you can go to apply for a Florida Concealed Weapons Permit, not that one will be issued right there without the usual procedures.
In Florida, you can either mail your paperwork to the Division of Licensing or go to one of eight regional offices to do it in person. Usually the ones done at the regional offices are processed faster because all the data including fingerprints are done digitally. What this bill will do is allow Tax Collecting offices to do the same thing thus offering more places to those who seek getting their CWPs.
In many states, permits are handled by the county sheriff and that means that they have as many offices to apply for a permit as counties in the state. Florida has 67 counties but only 8 offices to apply for the permit, so what this bill is doing is nothing more that bringing the state to the standards already established and working well in other places.
You can read the text of the bill here and remember to contact your legislators so they can support SB 544 and the correspondent measure I am sure will pop in the House.
My county in NC now allows citizens to apply for permits on line.
An advance culture…. envy 🙂
FYI, here in MA concealed carry licenses are issued at the local town police chief level–so we have as many places of issue as we do towns. That’s about 300, with a state population of about 6.6MM. (Of course, many of the towns closer to Boston simply don’t issue permits to the filthy masses, but still . . . )
–Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
We really need to get those old laws fixed in Florida. Many of the restrictions were “gimmies” to the Gun Control crowd who were sure CWPs were going to be a bad idea. If anything we have proven that we are far more law abiding than say… Mayors Against Illegal Guns?
Florida has really fallen over the edge. I’m beginning to believe in the slippery slope theory. It’s just it leads to guns everywhere rather than gun confiscation.
and the problem with guns everywhere would be….?
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-gun-background-checks-20131223,0,2699692.story