A gun in every pocket
Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill Thursday to allow people to carry concealed loaded weapons anywhere without permits.
What could possibly go wrong?
The measure would scrap existing requirements for concealed weapons permits, including an extra layer of background checks, licensing and firearms training.
Because what Florida (and everywhere else) needs is more and more and more and more people with guns.
Senate passage comes just three days after a shooter opened fire inside a Nashville, Tennessee, school, killing six people — including three 9-year-old children — an attack DeSantis has not yet spoken about publicly.
Did you miss the Tennessee part? It’s another state. What’s Tennessee got to do with Florida? States’ rights yo.
If the bill does become law, Florida — the site of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — will become the 26th state to allow people to carry concealed loaded guns anywhere without permits, a growing trend that has alarmed gun safety groups.
Wawawa. Chickenshits. Getting shot is good for you, it builds character.
The bill wrapped in measures Republican legislators said would increase school safety, such as creating a standardized school threat assessment process and expanding a program that allows school district employees to carry guns at schools.
Ugh. I’ve run out of sarcasm.
Now let me guess. The National Rifle Association (NRA) will respond to this by urging all Florida schoolkids down to kindergarten level to arm themselves with the latest in concealable hardware, and of course, to shoot first and ask questions later. The same law would probably allow a kid to bring a fully-loaded multi-round bazooka to school hidden within the foam-padded body of one of those cuddly dinosaurs from some TV program like ‘Sesame Street.’
Perhaps the odd school could be renamed ‘The OK Corral.’
Alabama’s permitless carry law went into effect this year. 25 states already allow permitless carry (ND only for residents), so Florida makes it 26. That is, a majority of states allow permitless carry. It’s terrible, but let’s not think Florida is an outlier.
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/resources/terminology/types-of-concealed-carry-licensurepermitting-policies/unrestricted/
I somehow managed to not know that.
A right-wing co-worker once told me in all seriousness that men fought and died for our right to shoot-up schools.
I was at a loss for words and couldn’t respond.
I’m beginning to think I should stay in Nebraska; from the map, it looks like we’re one of only a few midwestern states that hasn’t passed that yet. I do think it’s on the table, and comes up nearly every session, but it hasn’t passed yet.
Me, one of my coworkers was explaining how much better informed the younger generation is because they don’t read newspapers or news magazines; they get their news from social media. WTF?
Washington state is not too far behind. A permit is required for concealed carry here, but all it takes to get one is $75 and a clean background check. Open carry is legal without either of those, and I regularly see men availing themselves of the opportunity to do so. In my mind, there is no reason for open carry other than to intimidate. I live in a small university town; there’s really not any kind of gun culture here, so walking around with a handgun openly displayed on one’s hip is really nothing more than ego and bravado.
Me @ 2, given that back in WW1 and even WW2 America hadn’t started gun fetishising quite so much, I’d be really surprised if people really went off to fight thinking”this will protect peoples rights to shoot school kids and teachers.” I suspect Americans fought for all the same reasons everyone else did. Some because they were patriotic and wanted to support their country. Some because they believed the other side were wrong and a serious threat. Some because they thought it would be a great adventure. Some because they didn’t want to be seen as cowards. Some because going to war seemed like a better choice than wherever they were currently stuck. The number who even articulated something around freedom before signing up (and not because they were parroting a recruitment poster) was a minority I’d bet. Of those, the number who had the. 2A uppermost in their minds would have been zero.
But that’s the point! “The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” These delusional fools think that if the bad guys can see all the good guys have guns, they’ll be intimidated into not doing anything bad. Side benefit, Libs will be intimidated into treating them with respect as well. The fact that what it really means is that bad guys who want to live will just get body armour and better weapons (the suicidal ones – majority? – won’t be affected at all), and Libs will just cease even trying to talk to them, totally escapes whatever passes for rational thought in their heads.
In Oz, our media is dominated by Murdoch with two slightly smaller players. All support the right wing side of politics.
At the last four elections (3 state, 1 federal) all their blab, bluster, bullshit and billions have failed to get the result they wanted and now Tasmania is the sole state with a right-wing government. Credit for this goes to the excellent use of social media by the left and independents who managed to connect with younger voters.
Legacy media, newspapers, radio, and free-to-air TV are all in decline and it is the younger part of the population who have ignored them. They don’t read the daily papers, they don’t watch FTA TV, and they get their music and video from Spotify, Vimeo, etc. Yes, they do get their news from Social Media, and the clever advertisers know that is where to engage with them.
Are they better informed? Probably better informed than the average Fox viewer or NY Times reader. They can engage with social media in a way the legacy media can’t. Anyone can post a comment on, say Twitter, and receive feedback. Online versions of daily newspapers allow comments on some, but not all, articles and those are heavily moderated. Post too far from the paper’s view and your comment will never see the light of day.
Is social media the perfect medium for political discussion and news? Time will tell, but legacy media was never perfect. Just look at the cheerleading for Shrub’s illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Paul Murray, a Sky After Dark talking head in Australia, thinks that WWII was fought to defeat socialism. I guess his High School History teacher didn’t point out the role of the USSR or that it was a Command Economy imposed on the USA that was the direct cause of victory.
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For our non-Australian readers, Sky After Dark is similar to the worst and most stupid “commentary” on your Fox “News”.
Rev @ 9, he’s probably one of those right-leaning (alt-right sympathetic?) ‘moderates’ who try and distance their views from Nazis by saying that ‘Nazis were actually socialist – I mean it’s right in the name!’ The links of the Nazi party to socialism have of course been debunked many times, but still it persists. it’s just another mantra like TWAW.
Rob@7,
A lot went because they were drafted (which doesn’t preclude the other motivations, of course).
WaM, absolutely.
Rev, the best informed are usually those who get their information from a variety of sources. Social media is the last source I would use. Too much garbage, it can be hard to sort out. A combination of newspapers, blogs, television, and other internet sources can lead you to good information, even though the newspapers may tend to lean toward a side or may be more interested in money than news. It just takes a little work.
And where do the social media writers get their news? They aren’t going out and collecting it (other than things like the videos of things as they’re happening). They are getting it from the news sources.
I recently read that, in its worst year of violence, Tombstone Arizona had FIVE deaths by gunshot. That includes the OK Corral. Of course Tombstone banned any carrying of personal firearms within the town. The Earps and Holliday picked up their weapons and went to meet the Clantons/Mclaurys. They didn’t even have holsters for ‘open carry.’