SNAFU
In Florida concealed carry permits are issued by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That Department is headed by Howdy Doody look-alike Adam Putnam, first cousin of Katherine Harris (Florida Secretary of State for the 2000 Presidential debacle) and they are grandchildren of Ben Hill Griffin who gave his name to the football stadium at the University of Florida, which is considered a good deal more important than Mount Rushmore. BHG was a major force in Florida agriculture and politics.
Putnam is running for governor, but currently has a bit of a problem – Report reveals Florida stopped doing gun permit checks for more than a year:
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 claim is the fired employee was the sole problem. The employee states that she was working in the mail room, had no idea why she was assigned to do background checks, and didn’t know how to sign on to the Federal system.
The 291 permits revoked amounted to almost 80% of the permits that were approved by on a check of state records. Putnam prominently displays his NRA A+ rating for arming Florida, saying he wouldn’t have signed the recent changes to Florid laws that were approved following the Parkland shooting.
2 comments
So they fired the mail room employee for not being competent to run Federal background checks? Wow.
Florida. The only government less competent than Trump’s.
Putnam has a degree in “food and resource economics”, whatever that means, but it is probably related to the citrus industry and his family’s business. He had no management experience when he was elected to Ag Comm as a grandchild of BH Griffin.
Even my Trumpnik loon of a local Congresscritter [Matt Gaetz] thinks that Putnam screwed up.
Apparently the checks were run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but the mail room clerk didn’t know how to get the results. Unless she was the final approval authority in the Department, why didn’t those above her notice the results were missing for over a year? They processed about 350,000 applications during the year, but only checked 365 of them after the problem was reported by the Department IG.
Putnam says that people couldn’t buy a gun because the store would run that check … unless they bought the weapon in a private sale or a gun show where no checks take place and the possession of a carry permit would be considered proof that the individual was OK.