Meeting with Detectives

Last Wednesday Jan and I met with the Tampa Police Detectives that did the investigation of Debra Monce when she shot my wife. As we expected they told us that it is not a crime to mishandle a gun, shoot someone and leave them without lending any aid what so ever. There are no laws that say that it is wrong to do that. On the contrary the laws protect persons with guns. When we obtained a copy of the police report the information about the gun had been redacted, as a person who had been shot Jan had no right to know what type of gun had shot her.

 The state of Florida and the Federal Government also protect Debra Monce in other other ways. In Florida it is against the law for me or anyone else to obtain information about who holds a concealed weapons permit. The Federal Government has also made it against the law to know how many or what type of guns an individual owns.

And because no charges were filed against Debra Monce she still has the right to carry concealed weapons and to buy as many guns as she wants with out any kind of background check. Just walk in show them her card and walk out with a gun. And now she can put a notch in her gun.

Other fun facts that I learned whole meeting with the Detectives; I thought that I had an idea of the number of guns that a crowd of people would be carrying. From my research I had determined that about 3 in a 100 people in the State of Florida had a concealed weapons permit and then I figured that at least that many more nuts also carried guns without a permit. Not quite 10%. When I spouted that "fact" to the detectives they assured me that I was wrong with my figures. The number that the police assume ( and I'm sure that they have a better idea than me) is out there is at least 25%! One in four.That is a lot of guns. That means that at family night at our school there could be upwards of 100 guns.

Thats a lot of nuts. And other than asking each person if they are packing heat and trusting their answer there is no way for me, the school, the police or anyone else to find out who they are. That is till the bullets start flying. Then if the gun nut can convince the States Attorney that, Oops, my bad I "dropped my gun" then they can continue with their meetings even while their victim is carried away in an ambulance.