310 mistakes – the final Florida audit on what went wrong with concealed weapons permits
Excerpt: The Florida department that approves gun permits and licenses for security guards and private investigators had inadequate oversight that led to hundreds of permits issued in error, according to a state audit released this week.
The state auditor general report details many of the problems that were previously disclosed by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, but said the department understated the number of concealed weapons permits that had to be revoked.
The department previously reported that it revoked concealed weapons permits from 291 people after discovering an employee had failed to complete all of the required background checks.
The state audit said it was actually 310 permits that were revoked and said the number was misstated because of a transposition error.
Bottom Line: The issue that dogged Adam Putnam during the primaries has come to a close. There were 310 mistaken permits issued from his office that he had attributed to an error made by a former employee who has been removed from the post. I was curious to see how many people potentially would have fallen through the cracks. In the history of concealed carry permits in Florida, 1.8% of those who have applied were not eligible and were declined.
In 2018 through November, 53,485 requests for permits were issued and 50,308 permits were actually issued.
That is a decline rate of a whopping 5.9% or greater than three times the historical decline rate. In other words, if the question is/was whether Adam Putnam’s Agricultural Department is generally minding the store responsibly of late, the answer is a doubtless yes based on this digging that I did on this topic.
Mistakes are mistakes but to put the error rate in perspective, it was around .1% of the applications received during the time in question. 99.9% accuracy is pretty darn good and the question is whether you take the needed action to fix problems when they’re presented. In Putnam’s case, the answer appears to be yes as he is about to ride off into the sunset. Nowhere in state government is a bigger change coming than to Florida’s Agriculture Department with Nikki Fried about to take the reins. It will be interesting to track these numbers into her time as commissioner.
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