The Florida Phoenix notes that the Florida Senate is on the verge of passing permitless carry:
The Florida Legislature moved one step closer to bringing a “permitless” gun bill to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk Wednesday, with the state Senate moving the bill to a final vote in the upcoming days.
The controversial proposal would allow individuals who carry concealed weapons to forego a license or training course – a notion that Democrats say will make the state a much less safe place to live in.
The vote came two days after an assailant at a private Christian school in Nashville shot and killed three children and three adult staff members, and three days ago, the 130th mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive 2023.
There have not, in fact, been 130 mass shootings this year — such claims are false and manipulative and unhelpful, and news outlets ought to stop printing them — but I’ll ignore that for now and note instead that this story contains yet another example of a missing “therefore.” The Phoenix starts by noting that “the Florida Legislature moved one step closer to bringing a ‘permitless’ gun bill to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk Wednesday”; it then relays that “the vote came two days after an assailant at a private Christian school in Nashville shot and killed three children and three adult staff members”; and, after that, it just . . . goes quiet.
Why?
If there were a link between these two things, the author would presumably be willing to explain it. “Had the shooter in Tennessee been obliged to acquire a carry permit,” he might have written, “her victims would still be alive.” But, obviously, no such link exists, and, despite his insinuations, the author knows it. Simply put, what happened in Nashville had nothing whatever to do with concealed carry. The killer did not conceal her weapons. The killer did not attempt to conceal her weapons. Indeed, at no point did the killer enter into any situation whatsoever in which an obligation to obtain a concealed-carry permit might have made a difference. The whole thing is a cynical non sequitur: Florida is considering removing a legal provision that requires eligible adults to apply for a permit before they may carry firearms outside of the home; in Nashville, a deranged woman killed six people in a school with a rifle; therefore . . .?
Therefore what?
The only possible explanation for the Phoenix‘s decision to link these two matters — a decision that, mark my words, is going to be echoed by pretty much every media outlet in America within about ten seconds of Governor DeSantis signing the bill — is that its editors want to ban all guns. On the face of it, it makes no sense to link what happened in Nashville to the rise of permitless carry (or permitted carry, for that matter) — unless you see the issue on a spectrum that runs between prohibition and laissez-faire, and you thus object to any liberalization of the laws on the grounds that it gets you further away from your broader goal. If, indeed, that is the view of the American press, then it ought to avoid making specious innuendoes and come out and say so unabashedly. And if it’s not, it ought to cut it out post haste.