After the shooting that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people in Arizona, some federal and state officials are calling for stricter gun laws, especially control of automatic weapons and super-sized ammunition clips. But in Florida the tide is turning in the other direction, toward greater freedom for gun owners.
Senate Bill 234, filed in Tallahassee in December, would make the "open carry" of firearms legal in Florida for the first time in decades. Under legislation presented by Sen. Greg Evers, R-Crestview, people with concealed weapons permits could wear handguns on their hips in public view.
Evers said people with permits to carry concealed firearms have sometimes been cited by law enforcement agents when a gun inadvertently becomes visible.
"A gust of wind makes a suit coat flap open and the person is in trouble," Evers said. Or an air conditioner breaks, and a person removes a jacket and exposes a firearm.
He said the purpose of his bill is to end such instances, and he expects most licensed gun carriers will continue to conceal their weapons.
But he also said he is not averse to more people displaying their firearms.
"Do I think that will deter crime?" he asked. "Absolutely."
Dana Sanchez Quist, South Florida spokeswoman for the Washington-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, opposes the bill.
"What do they want, to bring back the Wild West?" she asked. "We are supposed to be a civilized country and we are encouraging people who say, 'Respect me because I have a gun.' " Sanchez Quist said she fears that firearms worn in public could easily end up in the hands of the wrong people.
"If you can snatch a necklace off a woman, you can snatch a gun off someone who isn't expecting it, too," she said.
She also expressed concern for Florida's economy, saying the open display of firearms by civilians might drive away tourists.
"We have bad economic problems and this could just make them worse," she said.
According to opencarry.org, a website that supports greater rights for gun owners, 43 states generally allow open carry, although licenses are sometimes required, specific locales are often off limits - such as elementary and high schools - and municipalities can retain the right to enforce their own prohibitions. Florida is listed as one of seven states that expressly prohibit open carry; the only exceptions are for people going directly to or from target shooting, fishing, hunting and camping expeditions.
But Brian Malte, legislative director for the Brady center, said the issue is being debated in many states and some regulations could change.
"For example, California currently has no law on the books, but there is a bill introduced this year to ban open carry," he said. "And in Texas, which currently bans open carry, there is a move to allow it."
Evers' bill also would make it legal for licensed individuals - who must be 21 or older - to carry firearms on public college and university campuses, a practice that is now outlawed. Activists who favor allowing guns on college campuses point to the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and say that if someone had been able shoot back at mass killer Seung-Hui Cho, 32 people would not have died.
But Sanchez Quist and other gun control proponents disagree. "This will not add to safety on campuses," she said.
Meanwhile, on the Florida House side, a bill filed in December by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, would levy fines as high as $5 million on public entities, including police departments, that in any way abridge gun rights contained in Florida statutes.
Although state gun-rights laws have been on the books for years, municipalities sometimes violate them because no penalties exist for doing so, Gaetz said.
Gaetz and others point to two cases, in Palm Beach County and the city of South Miami, where local elected officials enacted laws mandating trigger locks on weapons. In 2002, the state courts ruled that those laws violated state statutes and the principle that only the legislature can adopt gun and ammunition laws in Florida.
"The fines are a disincentive for the government to violate the law, to violate the Second Amendment," Gaetz said.
The bill also would prohibit government entities from using tax money to defend any employee who knowingly abridges gun ownership rights as defined by the legislature.
The Brady center's Malte said he had not seen such language in any other bill nationwide.
"It's bizarre," he said. "You have public officials trying to do their duty and being threatened with this. There seems to be no end to what the NRA will do."
He was referring to the National Rifle Association, the country's premier gun rights organization.
Marion Hammer, NRA spokeswoman in Tallahassee and former national leader of the group, defended the bill. She said it is so expensive to sue a local government that citizens can't afford to defend themselves when their rights are violated.
She also said she believes the bills will pass despite the Arizona killings.
"What happened in Arizona should not affect what happens here," she said.
Nationally, some politicians are clamoring for more gun control. Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., has called for closing loopholes that allow sales of weapons at gun shows without mandatory background checks. He also wants an end to "fire sales," a procedure that he says allows gun shops going out of business to sell their inventories without doing background checks.
In Washington, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., is sponsoring a bill to outlaw ammunition clips of more than 10 bullets for sale to civilians, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., will present it in the Senate. Such clips were illegal under a previous ban on assault weapons, which was allowed to expire in 2004.
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, the suspect in the Arizona killing spree, used a clip holding 33 bullets.
In 1993, McCarthy's husband was killed and her son seriously wounded when a gunman opened fire at random on a train of the Long Island Rail Road .
Also, many politicians are calling for better dataÂbases listing people with serious mental problems, who should not be allowed to buy guns.
Loughner is said to fit that description.
"Our authorities need somehow to have more information on people like that," said U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar. "We need to do all we can to prohibit those persons from purchasing guns."
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