Yes, they might be checking to see if she had a carry permit. I hope the cops know the difference.
But still . . . . in Florida, a carry permit applies to the person, not the gun. The gun is not required to be registered.
The "gun went off" and "shot her in the chest" statement bothers me more, though. Reporters always act as if guns have minds of their own, and sometimes they just "go off" and "shoot people." Because, you know, guns are inherently evil and dangerous and it's not safe to even be in the same room with one, because sometimes they accidentally "go off" and shoot someone.
I suspect there was no holster (or at least not one that covered the trigger) and this woman was rooting around in her bag without regard to the fact that she had a loaded weapon in there. She accidentally pulled the trigger and she accidentally shot herself in the chest.
Unless the gun was in someone else's bag, in which case someone else accidentally pulled the trigger and accidentally shot the woman, but in neither case did the gun "go off" by itself. Do we ever read stories that say "The car accidentally accelerated and ran over the person" or "The bathtub accidentally filled itself with water and drowned the baby"? But we hear all the time about guns acting independently of any human intervention and shooting someone.
