A new Gun Violence Offender Court in Jacksonville, Florida is aimed at reducing the number of prolific offenders who are quickly returned to the streets after an arrest by speeding up their journey through the criminal justice system. The strategy doesn't rely on creating new, non-violent possessory offenses aimed at restricting the Second Amendment rights of lawful gun owners. Instead, it's essentially the judicial version of "targeted deterrence"; focusing on the small number  of the most violent and prolific offenders who are responsible for an outsized portion of crime in the community.

State Attorney Melissa Nelson, whose office helped spearhead the new division, said she thinks it may be the first of its kind in Florida. 

... "This is going to be a lot of work and it’s going to be fast-paced," Nelson said. "… In a regular courtroom, we might have an important shooting case, but it’s rivaling maybe a third-degree felony that hasn’t waived speedy trial yet and has to bump this case. The cases in this court are all serious cases, they’re all minimum-mandatory cases, they’re all shooting cases. I hope in addition to efficiencies, the swifter we are with and consistent with punishment, it should have some public safety benefit as well.”

Nelson created a division within the state attorney's office called Targeted Prosecution, which she says focuses on the offender and not just the offense. As an example, she pointed to a case involving someone suspected of five different murders. With witnesses reluctant to testify, Nelson says prosecutors and police couldn't build a homicide case that they felt comfortable taking to court, but when the same man was arrested for assaulting his pregnant girlfriend, attorneys in the Targeted Prosecution division took that case and ran with it; charging the suspect with a felony and "incapacitating" him behind bars for a lengthy period of time. 

While the Gun Violence Offender Court is new to Jacksonville, Nelson says the "targeted prosecutions" have been taking place for about seven years, and she believes they're having an impact. According to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, there have been 39 murders in the jurisdiction this year; a 41% decrease from the 66 homicides recorded this time in 2023, and far below the 79 homicides recorded at this point in 2022. 

It's worth noting that homicides have dropped sharply after the state's permitless carry law took effect last year, though gun control groups like Everytown claimed the new law would create a "huge risk to public safety by allowing unvetted, untrained people to carry in our communities." 

As is evident, we don't need to put more restrictions on responsible gun owners in order to fight violent crime. I'd argue that the gun control laws groups like Everytown, Brady, and Giffords are demanding aren't only infringing a fundamental civil right (which is atrocious enough); they're a distraction from prosecuting the violent offenders who are the direct cause of so many murders, home invasions, carjackings, and assaults. The plunging homicide rate in Jacksonville isn't just a sign of the successful use of a targeted deterrence strategy. It's proof that we can fight violent crime without waging war on our Second Amendment rights.