By What Mechanism?

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, April 03, 2023

 

In The New Republic, Prem Thakker fulfills my prediction from last week and claims that, by signing permitless carry into law, Governor “DeSantis has now made it even easier for people to carry guns, and schoolchildren to get murdered.”

 

How?

 

Seriously, how? What’s the mechanism? Florida’s bill — like those that have passed in 24 other states — removes the requirement that legally eligible residents must obtain a permit before they carry firearms in a concealed manner while they are outside their homes. That’s it. It doesn’t change who may carry. It doesn’t change where those people may carry. It doesn’t affect which guns are legal and which are not. It doesn’t remove the federal prohibition on carrying firearms in schools. It doesn’t alter how firearms are bought, or bypass the associated background check system. It doesn’t repeal the rules against killing people. These “schoolchildren” who will now be “murdered.” How, specifically, will that happen?

 

Presumably, Thakker has something in mind? Presumably, he can point to a single school shooting in American history that was affected by the state’s concealed carry laws? Presumably, he can explain how the rules that regulate public carry intersect with murders in schools? He has a few details, right? He has an example of a person who carried out a massacre in a school who, absent his ability to legally carry a concealed weapon without a permit, would not have been able to do so? He can name a person who was killed in this circumstance who would not have been killed in a state that required permits of its concealed carriers — or, even, in a state that had a different carry regime than Florida had before this change was made? He can illustrate how this specific change in the law will increase violence in schools? He has something, surely?

 

He does not.