In Florida, you can walk out of a gun shop with an assault rifle. Want a handgun? You’ll need to wait three days before being allowed to take it home.
Early Sunday, 29-year-old Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and injuring 53 in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The weapons Mateen used – a semi-automatic Sig Sauer MCX military-style rifle and a 9mm Glock pistol – were purchased legally just days before the massacre.
“An evil person came in here and legally purchased two firearms from us,” Edward Henson, owner of the St. Lucie Shooting Center, told media in a Monday press conference. “If he hadn’t purchased them from us, I’m sure he would have got them from another local gun store in the area.”
A Florida resident with no criminal record, Mateen was able to buy both weapons without issue from the shop, which is a short drive from his home. The two terrorism-related FBI investigations Mateen was subject to would not have registered during a mandatory background check because both investigations were closed due to lack of evidence.
“This man held multiple security licenses,” Henson, a retired NYPD officer, said. “He had an armed and an unarmed licence. He passed a background check that every single person that purchases a firearm in the state of Florida undergoes.”
Florida has some of the laxest gun laws in America. The Sunshine State does not require people to hold a licence to buy or possess firearms, and guns do not have to be registered. There are also no limits on how many firearms you can buy at a time.
Although there’s a mandatory waiting period of three days between purchasing and acquiring a handgun, any weapon designed to be used with two hands – including military-style assault rifles – can be taken home on the day of purchase. Thus, to get your hands on a gun in the state, all you need to do is fill out an ID form and pass a criminal background check. If you’re buying a gun privately, a background check isn’t required.
Assault rifles like the MCX and AR-15 were federally banned between 1994 and 2004, when aggressive lobbying from the National Rifle Association saw the ban to expire. Although fully automatic weapons remain illegal, semi-automatic assault rifles like the AR-15 are incredible popular in the U.S. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), roughly 5 to 10 million AR-15s are owned in the country. Only seven states ban them.
A variant of the fully automatic M16 assault rifle, which came to prominence during the Vietnam War, the AR-15 is semi-automatic, which means the trigger must be pulled each time you want to fire a shot. The weapon Mateen used was modelled after the AR-15.
The military-style rifle has been used in multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that claimed 14 lives and the 2012 murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. After calls to ban the rifle were made in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, AR-15 sales spiked across the United States.
