Eric J. Friday
TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s ban on the open carry of firearms can no longer be enforced by law-enforcement officers in the wake of a state appeals court ruling saying the law is incompatible with the Second Amendment, the state attorney general said.
In a Sept. 10 decision, the First District Court of Appeal concluded that the open-carry ban, which criminalizes the act of carrying firearms openly in public, flies in the face of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms. In turn, the conviction of the appellant in the case, Stanley Victor McDaniels, was vacated and his sentence reversed, the court decided.
Uthmeier
In a Sept. 15 letter to law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors, state Attorney General James Uthmeier said the open-carry ban should no longer be enforced.
“Prudence counsels that prosecutors and law enforcement personnel should likewise refrain from arresting or prosecuting law-abiding citizens carrying a firearm in a manner that is visible to others,” Uthmeier said. “... My office moving forward will no longer defend convictions and prosecutions under Section 790.053(1) in cases like Mr. McDaniels’.
McDaniels’ attorney, Eric J. Friday, called the appeals court ruling the most impactful of any state court ruling ever to be handed down on a gun-rights issue. Referring to his client, Friday told the Florida Record, “He engaged in a blatant act of civil disobedience to challenge the law, and he won.”
McDaniels took to the streets in downtown Pensacola on July 4, 2022, to oppose the open-carry law.
“He held a copy of the United States Constitution in one hand and was waving at vehicles that drove by with his other hand,” the appeals court said in its opinion. “He also had a loaded handgun tucked inside his pants using an inside-the-waistband holster. The holstered firearm was visible to anyone who passed by, but McDaniels was not threatening anyone.”
McDaniels was later arrested for his actions, and prior to his trial, he asked the trial court to dismiss the charge against him and declare the open-carry ban unconstitutional. The trial court refused that motion, but it certified the question of whether the law violates the Second Amendment to the appeals court.
The appeals court found the state failed to demonstrate that it had “a relevant historical tradition of firearms regulation” justifying the imposition of the open-carry ban.
“... History confirms that the right to bear arms in public necessarily includes the right to do so openly,” the appeals court said. “That is not to say that open carry is absolute or immune from reasonable regulation. But what the state may not do is extinguish the right altogether for ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens.”
Friday took issue with the position of some law-enforcement agencies that argued allowing the open carry of firearms will make officers’ jobs more difficult because distinguishing between law-abiding gun owners and criminal suspects may become more difficult.
“There’s no factual or historical basis for these vitriolic claims,” he said, adding that law enforcement would be able to adapt to the legalization of open carry. “Just leave free people alone to go about their business” and not be harassed.
Uthmeier noted that the court decision does not give people the right to menace others with firearms in public, and it does not invalidate other state laws barring open or concealed carry at certain locations, such as schools and universities
