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In an old episode of “All in the Family,” Archie Bunker says the way to stop airline hijackings was simple: Issue each passenger a gun.
Hijackers won’t try nothin’, Archie theorized, if they know everyone else on the plane is armed. By TV standards of the ’70s, that was typical of Archie’s grumpy-old-coot character.
But now, maybe the concept is not so far-fetched — not for airplanes, of course, but for everywhere else.
Dig deeper:What does ‘constitutional carry’ mean and how would it change gun laws in Florida?
There’s a move afoot in Florida not to issue everybody a firearm but to make it so we never know who’s packing heat, everywhere else. It’s called “constitutional carry,” based on the idea that the Second Amendment says we have a right to keep and bear arms and does not say anything about permits.
You don’t need a license for freedom of religion or freedom of speech, the theory goes, so why should you need one to exercise your gun rights?
Well we can regulate other constitutional rights within reason. Free speech doesn’t protect obscenity, libel or telling your cult followers to violently besiege the U.S. Capitol. There were court cases just last year about pandemic rules applying to church gatherings.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis — running for re-election now and for president in 2024 — has always been a pro-gun guy. His proposal to follow about half the other states in letting law-abiding citizens carry concealed pistols, without permits, is not surprising although he hedged it a bit.
“I can’t tell you exactly when, but I’m pretty confident that I will be able to sign ‘constitutional carry’ into law in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a recent news conference. “The Legislature will get it done. I can’t tell you if it’s going to be next week, six months, but I can tell you that before I am done as governor, we will have a signature on that bill.”
More from Bill Cotterell:
There’s a special session on home insurance planned later this month, and DeSantis could expand the call to include constitutional carry. If not, legislation is sure to be introduced in the 2023 session.
Rep. Anthony Sabatini, R-Howey in the Hills, introduced such a bill this year but it never even got a committee hearing. Let’s just say Sabatini is not the most beloved and admired member of the House.
But DeSantis is enormously popular with the Republicans who run the Legislature and he can get it done. GOP lawmakers pretty much jump to obey his every whim.
Constitutional carry doesn’t necessarily mean strapping a six gun on your hip, O.K. Corral style. But why not? If you’re going to carry a gun, why not let everyone know — might avoid having to unholster it — and wouldn’t you like to know who around you is armed?
There’s a certain logic to the idea. What matters is who has a gun, like criminals or mentally unstable people, not where they have it. And criminals won’t obey any law anyway.
But there is a huge problem for law enforcement. Arriving at a crime scene, a cop has maybe a tenth of a second to decide who are the good guys and bad guys. We don’t need six or eight people standing around with guns, however legally they might have them.
Florida authorized concealed weapon permits in 1987 and there’s no shortage of them. Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, whose agency issues those licenses, called DeSantis’ promise political pandering to his most conservative GOP base.
But she’s a Democrat running for governor herself. We’ve seen, repeatedly, how powerless Democrats are at stopping anything DeSantis wants.
Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, has said he’ll support constitutional carry if it gets to the Senate floor. Simpson is running to succeed Fried as agriculture commissioner and taking care of the guns is significant for that race.
It’s noteworthy that DeSantis said he might not get constitutional carry now, or next year, but that we’ll see it before he leaves the Governor’s Mansion. That’s a clear appeal to the most conservative voters, those motivated by their view of the Second Amendment.
It says, “Re-elect me and we’ll take care of this,” and it forces Democrats to come out against it — pretty much a reflex position. And never mind the facts of constitutional carry, that’s never a winning position in an election year.
Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter who writes a twice-weekly column. He can be reached at bcotterell@tallahassee.com
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