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After Media-Brutalized Gun Freedom Law, Violent Crime Drops in Florida


BY: JORDAN BOYD | JANUARY 16, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/16/after-media-brutalized-gun-freedom-law-violent-crime-drops-in-florida/

constitutional carry in Florida

When Florida became the 26th state to adopt constitutional carry, corporate media and Democrats lost their minds.

None of the requirements for how citizens obtained guns in the Sunshine State changed when Florida House Bill 543 became law July 1, 2023. That didn’t stop the anti-gun press, which were not welcome at the signing, from claiming that permitless concealed carry would exacerbate shootings.

“Following mass shootings, DeSantis signs permitless carry bill,” one NBC News headline complained. In the article, the producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” sneered at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trading what he dubbed “modest gun safeguards” for an “extreme” and “controversial” law.

Forbes also amplified rhetoric from gun control groups including Giffords claiming the pro-Second Amendment law is “dangerous” and “will drive gun violence up and further jeopardize the safety of our families and communities.”

Even President Joe Biden’s White House joined the dogpile on DeSantis and Florida Republicans for daring to reinforce their constituents’ constitutional rights.

“It is shameful that so soon after another tragic school shooting, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a permit- less concealed carry bill behind closed doors, which eliminates the need to get a license to carry a concealed weapon,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote. “This is the opposite of commonsense gun safety. The people of Florida — who have paid a steep price for state and Congressional inaction on guns from Parkland to Pulse Nightclub to Pine Hills — deserve better.”

Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”

Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.

The real record-breaking reduction in homicides was recorded in Miami. In 2022, the municipality recorded 49 homicides. By 2023, that number was down to 31, the fewest number of killings ever recorded in the Magic City. Miami also reported a 34 percent drop, from 151 to 100, in non-fatal shootings and 124 fewer “non-contact” shootings than in 2022. The change mirrors a national trend in less violent crime in 2023.

Florida’s constitutional carry law may not be the sole reason for those numbers, but this is the exact opposite of what Democrats claimed would happen after the law passed. Indeed, it’s fair to suspect respecting citizens’ constitutional right to self-defense played a role in the crime decline. Good guys with guns can deter, prevent, and even stop crime. The legal use of firearms helps thwart an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year.

Studies show that constitutional carry laws like the one in Florida don’t cause legal gun owners to commit crimes like mass shootings. Instead, permit-less carry emphasizes that the growing number of legal gun owners in the United States have the Second Amendment right to defend themselves and others if the need arises.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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No, Gun Violence Isn’t the Leading Cause of Death Among Children


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 26, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/26/no-gun-violence-isnt-the-leading-cause-of-death-among-children/

Vice President Kamala Harris

I recently wrote about an extraordinarily misleading Kaiser Family study that claimed “1 in 5” Americans have a family member who has been killed by a gun. Kaiser’s inflated findings were based on a small sample size of self-reported answers to questions that offered no useful limiting parameters. In many ways, another endlessly repeated contention of gun controllers suffers from the same problem: Gun violence is the number one cause of death of children in America. Virtually every media outlet and Democrat repeats this contention — including, recently, the vice president. The claim is meant to conjure up distressing images of frolicking kids in parks and schools being gunned down by assault weapons.

And horrific events certainly happen in the country. We need not gloss over the evil of mass school shootings, even if they’re rarer than gun-control types would have you believe. But that does not give people license to make things up.

We don’t really know which study Harris based her comments on, if any. And different sources come to different conclusions. None of them, however, are grounded in our familiar understanding of “children.” These studies count adults who are 18 and 19, and sometimes up to 25, years of age. Americans under 18 can’t purchase guns legally. That age seems, at the very least, the most obvious divide between adults and children. Because when you take 18- and 19-year-old adults out of the equation, the number of gun-related deaths among kids plummets considerably.

According to the CDC, the number one killer of children between 1-14 are accidents — vehicular, suffocation, and drowning. Twice as many kids under 12 died in cars than from guns. Also, if these studies began at birth rather than starting at one, the leading killer of all children would be diseases and genetic abnormalities. Surely a one-year-old is as much a “kid” as a 19-year-old. (And if you begin at fetal viability, by far the leading killer of young people would be late-term abortions — more than 8,000 viable unborn, and probably more than 50,000 performed after 15 weeks.)

No doubt, after many years of decline, there has been a rise in juvenile criminality. And 19 and 18-year-olds are far more likely to engage in criminality than 14 and 15-year-olds. There has also been a rise in juvenile suicides over the last several years. It’s a mental-health crisis. None of the “reasonable gun safety laws” Harris is pushing address those problems.

Perhaps one day, with the advances in car safety technology and medicine, her claim about guns and kids will be true. Today it’s not.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Check Out the Bravest Gun Rights Speech You’ll Ever See


REPORTED BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | MAY 26, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/26/check-out-the-bravest-gun-rights-speech-youll-ever-see/

Vikki Buckley

Secretary of State Vikki Buckley welcomed the NRA conference attendees to Colorado with a breathtaking speech on gun rights.

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The National Rifle Association is hosting its leadership summit in Houston on Friday. Following a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school Tuesday, many corporate media outlets are suggesting politicians should cancel their planned speeches there.

ABC News tweeted:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1529534549214085120

“Houston Mayor Says He Can’t Cancel NRA Convention After School Massacre,” wrote Bloomberg. “Trump will keep ‘longtime commitment’ to Texas NRA event despite school shooting,” wrote the New York Post.

Why would an organization of law-abiding defenders of the U.S. Constitution cancel an event on account of a horrific school shooting committed by an individual with no regard for constitutional principles, readers might ask. Nevertheless, the pressure from the media and others opposed to gun rights will be intense.

It is reminiscent of a previous attempt by the media and other partisans to blame law-abiding gun owners and their defenders for gun violence. On April 20, 1999, two high school seniors murdered 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The NRA was slated to hold its large convention in Denver just days later.

Everyone in the political and media classes warned the NRA to cancel their convention. Many immediately pushed for gun control as the only valid response to the murders.

President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton immediately called for limits on gun rights, as did many other Democrat politicians. The Democrat mayor of Denver, Wellington Webb, repeatedly told the NRA attendees that they weren’t welcome anymore.

Weak-kneed politicians canceled their planned appearances. More than five dozen Colorado business leaders signed a full-page ad published in local newspapers asking the convention organizers to cancel. Thousands of anti-gun rights activists descended on the convention.

Nevertheless, a few brave gun rights proponents stood strong. Charlton Heston — the actor and civil rights activist who was by then president of the NRA — opened up the convention in Denver on May 1, saying it was “absurd” and “offensive” to act as if supporters of Second Amendment rights couldn’t gather.

But what happened next was breathtaking. The top-ranking Republican in the state at that time was Gov. Bill Owens. He declined an invitation to speak. Secretary of State Vikki Buckley, a black Republican in her second term, welcomed the attendees to Colorado with a breathtaking speech on gun rights. “I greet you as Secretary of State of Colorado and I welcome you to Colorado, a state where some of us believe strongly in the entire Constitution of these United States, including the Second Amendment.”

Buckley was the first black secretary of state in Colorado and the first black Republican woman elected statewide in the Centennial State. The mother of three sons, she had once been on welfare to support them, eventually becoming a clerk typist in the secretary of state’s office in the early 1980s.

Her campaign pitch was to tell people that if she didn’t win the race, she’d have to train whoever did win. She defeated four other candidates for the Republican nomination in 1994 on the strength of a floor speech, even though hardly anyone at the convention had heard of her previously.

Buckley mentored young women and spoke to international women’s organizations about building stronger communities. She helped homeless children and worked to end the scourge of gang violence.

One of the children killed at Columbine was Isaiah Shoels, an 18-year-old black senior. His murderers had used racial slurs before killing him. Buckley had spent time with his parents and quoted Isaiah’s father about the scourge underlying violence.

“Guns are not the issue. Hate is what pulls the trigger of violence,” she said. She talked about “new age hate crimes,” such as raising children “without a value system which places a premium on human life,” or sending children to school “without a value system which teaches the difference between right and wrong.” She listed the ways in which children were not prepared for socioeconomic success, saying, “raise as much heck about that as you did about the NRA, and you will have saved more lives in five years than are taken with guns in a century.”

Buckley then shared the painful story of how she was the victim of gun violence. “I know firsthand the pain and fear–but that experience has not made me an opponent of the NRA or the Second Amendment,” she said. She called for resources to be spent against violence and hate, then said, “But we must stand ever strong against those who would ignore sections of the U.S. Constitution which they do not like. We are a strong democracy because the guiding principles of our Constitution and all of its amendments including the Second must be adhered to in its entirety, not selectively. Thank you and God bless America.”

The thousands of attendees roared to their feet and gave her a standing ovation. You can watch the speech here.

Rabid anti-gun rights activist Jake Tapper — yes, that Jake Tapper — attacked Buckley and her ideas. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, suggested Buckley was set for greater political heights.

It was not to be. Buckley died unexpectedly of a heart attack just two months later. Her courage and leadership is remembered.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio & Records, and many other publications. Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship at The Fund for American Studies and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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