Right flight and the ‘Gunshine State’

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— Plaque placed at the Statue of Liberty in 1903

Americans – tired of riots and woke politics, poorer from high taxes and increasingly unconstitutional regulations, huddled together as they flee crime and COVID-19 lockdowns, and yearning to breathe free from masks and mandates – are pouring into Florida.

Second Amendment opponents charged that the increase in Florida’s gun ownership led to higher numbers of firearm deaths – but mysteriously (to them), the overall murder rate actually dropped to the second-lowest murder rate recorded since the state began keeping statistics in 1971. (In fact, the JMI study reports, Florida’s crime rate has dropped for an astonishing 50 straight years.)

But…

A recent study in the Sunshine State-based James Madison Institute’s (JMI) Journal noted that almost 1,000 people a day are moving to Florida at least in part to escape high taxes, spiking crime rates, and coronavirus craziness elsewhere. Moreover, the JMI study found, the state’s GOP voter registration just hit a historic high relative to Democrats, a hint these new Floridians probably aren’t bringing their former states’ politics along with them.

After all, Florida made headlines the way it pushed back against the riots last year—riots that helped to put at least six million more guns in Americans’ hands. That means those who move to the state have something else to lose in voting for leftists besides their money.

At one time, not very long ago, Florida was at the forefront in protecting the right to keep and bear arms, becoming one of the earliest states — and the largest at the time — to move away from “may issue” concealed carry to a “shall issue” model. Today, more concealed weapon permits have been issued in the Sunshine State than any other state in the Union  –  over two million.  That, and the fact that it’s sort of shaped like a gun, helped earn Florida the moniker the Gunshine State.

Read more at The Washington Times