I also remember that the criminals were apparently frightened enough of armed fellow citizens that they took to going after tourists, identifying them by rental cars, which had particular license tags. I recall that the state changed the plates so you couldn't readily ID rental cars any more.
You remember correctly JimRed, I was living in south FL when the CCW law passed and the media of all kinds were having daily hissy fits saying that blood was going to be flowing in the gutters when any body who wanted to carry a gun on the streets could do so. That didn't happen of course, just the opposite in fact for the entire state overall, but I never heard a squeak in the media about that good outcome. I also remember that the criminals were apparently frightened enough of armed citizens that they took to going after unarmed tourists, identifying them by the rental car license plates.
BTW, while I lived in FL I worked with a retired Milwaukee cop for a short while, and he was very much opposed to the FL CCW law. He had no stats or anything else to back up his claims about how it made FL the crime capitol of the US. What actually made south FL so crime ridden in those days was the huge influx of illegals from Central and South America. Many of them were part of South American drug cartels that were smuggling hundreds of millions of $ worth of illegal drugs through the Miami-Dade metro area and killing each other in the process. Those people would have been carrying guns even if FL hadn't enacted a CCW law, and none of them could have gotten a CCW permit even if they wanted one.