Q&A of the Day – The Impact of Open Carrying of Firearms in Florida

As of today, there hasn’t been an arrest/citation for an open carry violation. What is important to note are the 15 places where it is still prohibited to open carry.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Your questions, Brian's answers. It's time for today's Q and
A of the day. This is the Brian mud Show. Hey,
Today's Q and A the impact of open carrying the
firearms in Florida. This is brought to you by listen
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(00:22):
me Brian Mudd at iHeartMedia dot com and the up
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and I leave a message. Therefore, it's could be something

(00:44):
maybe for a future Q and A even today's note this,
Hi Brian, I'd be interested in hearing from Rick Branshaw
or any other Florida Leo what it has been like
since open carrey has become the law. Personally, I've had
conversations with Leo's expressing straw men arguments. I poliitely acknowledged

(01:05):
their concern and let them know that twenty five other
states have open carry. In these open carry states, their
concerns have never been realized. And I hear you, and
I understand, and I have had many of these conversations too. Know,
a lot of folks law enforcement have a family law enforcement,
and even those that are say, for example, very conservative

(01:31):
in their politics, and our strong supporters to the Second
Amendment would prefer not to respond to an incident that
has people that are armed.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
And I can tell you, Brian, my discussions with I
was mentioned in Palm Beach County Shefferic Bradshaw. There in
the note, he was saying that nothing changes with regards
to how his deputies deal with us responding because they
have always responded with the assumption everybody on the scene
is carrying.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Sure. Yeah, and that's a pragmatic thing to do, for sure,
Just kind of like in the you know, conversational line
where you know the gentleman saying, hey, you know, I've
talked to some leos that are are concerned about this. Again,
if you're put yourself in their shoes for a minute,
I get the good guy with a gun argument, But

(02:23):
if you're in law enforcement and you're responding to an emergency.
You don't want even the good guys with a gun, right,
you want nobody with a gun. Right. That would be
your because I never know who to trust. Well, that's
number one, you don't know who to trust. Number two,
Mistakes can happen. You just all kinds of things, right,
so you can understand if you put yourself in their shoes,

(02:44):
especially this day and age, why they would express some concern.
And again, I know people that are like on the
personal level, yeah, I'm all about this, but the moment
that they put on that badge and get work, they'd
rather not deal with it. So that is not necessarily
in the hearing contradiction. It's just the reality of the
world that we live in. So anyway, following a recent

(03:06):
state court ruling striking down Florida's ban on the open
carrying of firearms, the open carrying officially took place on
September twenty fifth, and answered to the question regarding the
monitored impact in the early going, according to law enforcement,
I can tell you that as of now, we have
not had an arrest or citation for an open carry violation.

(03:28):
So I think that would be your answers that there's
been no impact. What is important to know there are
still fifteen places where it is prohibited to open carry,
and so people do need to be aware of this.
They include any place of nuisance as to find under
state law, any police, sheriff, or highway patrol station. Again,

(03:53):
these are all places where you may not open carry.
Any detention facility, prison or jail, any courthouse, any court room,
any polling place, any meeting of the governing body of
a county, public school, district, municipality, or special district. Any

(04:15):
meeting of the legislature or a committee thereof any school, college,
or professional athletic event not related to firearms. Any elementary
or secondary school facility or administration building, any career center.
Any portion of an establishment licensed to dispense alcoholic beverages

(04:38):
for consumption on the premises, which portion of the establishment
is primarily devoted to such purpose. Any college or university facility,
unless the licensee is a registered student, employee, or faculty
member of such college or university, and the weapon is
a stun gun or non lethal electronic weapon or device

(05:01):
designed solely for defensive purposes, and the weapon does not
fire a dart or projectile. The inside of the passenger
terminal and sterile area of any airport, provided that no
person shall be prohibited from carrying any legal firearm into
the terminal, which firearm is in case for shipment for
purposes of checking firearm as baggage to be lawfully transported

(05:25):
on any aircraft in any place where the carrying of
firearms is prohibited by federal law. So again, those are
the fifteen different restrictions that do still exist as it
pertains to open carry. It's important to know that as
for the overall impact of open carry policies, You're right,

(05:46):
the premise behind your note today is absolutely right. Preceding
floors recent legalization, you had thirty one states that allow
open carry without a permit. Some suggest is twenty nine
due to the level restrictions of a couple of those states.
In other words, most of the country has already allowed
for it, and the figure includes even several traditional blue
states like Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont,

(06:10):
and Washington. And in some cases people are surprised by that,
are like, you know, Delaware voted or Vermont voted to
open No, they didn't, They just never put it in
their their state concate, it was always there. It's been
there since their state's founding, and so that is where
it gets where it comes into point. In a lot
of these places, its just always has been so. Permitless

(06:33):
carry states, often including Opencarey, do have lower average violent
crime rates. If you take a look at those with
the least restrictive gun policy in the country, the violent
crime rate last year three hundred and fifty four violent
crimes per one hundred thousand in population compared to three

(06:54):
hundred and ninety one per one hundred thousand otherwise. And
then if you take a look at the twenty nine
states this year, you know, we've seen the crime that
has dropped through the first half the year. Those with
the least restrict of gun laws, we have seen lower

(07:16):
crime in those states up to sixty percent less than
what we saw previously. And then when you take a
look at things, just kind of the trend line here,
relaxing firearm restrictions has resulted in less crime. Most recently,
preceding Florida's legal changes, sixteen states loosened firearm restrictions over

(07:39):
the prior five years. Of them. Ten of those sixteen
states saw a decline in violent crime. Five about flat one,
which happened to be Alaska, had a meaningful increase in
crime and homicide rates approximately seven percent lower after the
gun laws were loosened. So yeah, I mean what you're

(08:00):
Jane is correct ultimately about the overall crime rates.