Recently, AW1Ed posted an article detailing problems with concealed carry permits in Florida. The problem stemmed from a Florida state employee losing access to a database that was required to be checked during the permit process and not performing the required checks. This allowed a number of potentially invalid concealed carry permits to be issued. When discovered, the suspect permits were re-checked; 291 were found to have been issued in error, and were subsequently revoked. The employee responsible for the fiasco was fired.
In a comment to AW1Ed’s article, a reader posted a comment alleging that the media had greatly exaggerated the issue. While the link posted by that commenter was to an article that I found poorly-written and somewhat confusing, I “pulled the thread” some more. And I think I’ve found, to a relatively high degree of certainty, “ground truth”.
The initial reports on the issue were somewhat confusing. Those initial reports referred to “tens of thousands” of permits issued over a period of around a year, and also indicated that 291 were ultimately revoked. But other than to say that 291 permits had been revoked, the initial reporting didn’t give much in the way of specific, pertinent details. And the reporting frankly implied the problem was both serious and widespread.
A subsequent follow-up article, quoting a spokesman for the pertinent Florida cabinet-level official whose department is responsible for issuing concealed carry permits in Florida, subsequently clarified the issue with those pertinent details. It turns out the issue was substantially less serious than originally reported by the media. But I doubt you’ll be seeing much in the way of follow-up from the mainstream media telling you that.
There’s also substantial circumstantial evidence that this could be a case of deliberately slanted news. Or, alternatively, that it’s a story so inaccurate and/or exaggerated that it indeed qualifies as having been created out of whole cloth, AKA “fake news”.
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So, what are the facts? Based on later clarification by a spokesman for Adam Putnam, the Florida Agriculture Commissioner, giving specific numbers and providing significant additional details here’s what appears to have happened:
1. The Florida concealed carry process requires that three databases be checked before a concealed carry permit is issued. Two of them are criminal history databases: Florida Crime Information Center database (FCIC) and the National Crime Information Center database (NCIC). The third is the Federal firearms disqualification database, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
2. During the period in question – February 2016 to March 2017 – 349,923 applications for a concealed carry permit were submitted in Florida. The two criminal databases, FCIC and NCIC, were checked in all cases.
3. In 365 cases, NCIS was not checked. A single Florida employee was responsible for performing these 365 checks, but failed to do so. Permits were issued in these cases which might have been invalid. In the other 349,558 cases, all 3 required databases were indeed checked.
4. When the matter was discovered, all 365 suspect cases were audited. A total of 291 of those cases were found on investigation to be problematic; the concealed carry permits for those 291 cases were revoked.
5. The employee who failed to perform their duties in the 365 cases in question no longer works there. Other reporting indicates they were fired, presumably for cause.
Bottom line: one Florida employee failed to do their job, apparently for a relatively short period of time.
Specifically, for some undefined but apparently fairly short period of time, a Florida employee lost access to NICS and failed to perform 365 checks in that database associated with the Florida concealed carry permit process – out of a total of 349,923 such checks performed during the overall period of interest. That was later discovered, and the issue was corrected by doing the required checks and revoking 291 permits that apparently were issued in error. The employee is now a former employee.
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So, what’s the problem with the initial reporting? I’ll tell you.
Other than the fact that the reporting was incomplete, it was also so slanted as to be effectively misleading – misleading to the degree that the author’s motive becomes suspect. Here’s how an AP article, apparently carried by (or based on an article in) the Tampa Bay Times, characterized the situation. In the quote below, I’ve redacted the name of the article’s author; follow the link if you want to see it.
Headline: Florida stopped doing gun permit checks for more than a year
By (name omitted), Associated Press
Posted: 8:31 PM, June 08, 2018
Updated: 10:18 AM, June 09, 2018
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – For more than a year, Florida failed to do national background checks that could have disqualified people from gaining a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
The lapse, revealed in an internal report that was not widely known about until Friday, occurred during a time period when there was a significant surge in the number of people seeking permission to legally carry a concealed weapon. Florida does not allow the open carry of weapons, but more than 1.9 million have permits to carry guns and weapons in public if they are concealed.
The state ultimately revoked 291 permits and fired an employee blamed for the lapse after an inspector general’s report detailing the problem was sent in June 2017 to top officials in the department who oversee the program. The Tampa Bay Times was the first to publish information about the report, which pointed out that the state failed to check the National Instant Criminal Background Check System from February 2016 to March 2017.
The article continues for several more paragraphs. Nowhere does it indicate that the problem was in reality restricted to a failure to conduct 365 checks, nor that barely 1 in 1,000 concealed carry permits didn’t have one of three required checks.
Rather, the average reader of that article would conclude that the problem applied to a far larger number of applications – indeed, that the process of issuing concealed carry permits in Florida was broken entirely. That’s not the case at all. The facts indicate that one employee failed to perform required background checks in roughly 1 application out of a thousand.
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So, where’s the evidence that this might be polically-motivated and slanted (or outright fake) news? Well, check the update timestamp of the AP article – then check the time stamp of the clarification article released by the Florida Agricultural Commissioner’s spokesman. The AP article was last updated over 12 hours after the clarification – long after the information in the clarification was available. As of about an hour ago, the AP article still did not include those significant and relevant facts.
Further, Mr. Putnam is a candidate for Governor in Florida’s next gubernatorial election. He’s not liberal, and has made it a point to streamline Florida’s concealed carry permit process. Do you really think the media wants to see him elected, given the media’s documented leftward tilt since at least the Eisenhower administration? Might a sensationalist article leading people to believe, erroneously, that his office was issuing concealed carry permits without due diligence hurt his chances for election?
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I’m not prepared to state, flatly, that this was a political hit job and qualifies as fabricated news. Maybe it’s just abysmally sloppy reporting. But there’s an old saying: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . . . “
Consider the facts and decide for yourself.
