The number of Florida residents with permits to carry concealed weapons will soon reach 1 million.
The Sunshine State will be the first in the nation to hit that milestone, the South Florida
Sun Sentinel said.
Florida has been issuing between 10,000 and 20,000 carry permits a month and will reach 1 million in a few weeks, the paper said.
"At the rate at which we are processing permits, we will sometime in the next six weeks to two months likely reach the million permit mark," Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
The number of carry applications began to rise about three years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president.
“There always seems to be a concern when there's a change in federal administration, when there might be some attention placed on gun control laws," said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which handles carry permits.
Putnam said the number of requests from people who want to carry guns has remained high.
"What was thought to be a spike has really turned into a sustained period of peak demand," he said.
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