Dennis Fields, membership director of Florida Carry Inc., said the latest court ruling equalizes Second Amendment rights for law-abiding adults in the state.
A Florida law that barred all 18- to 20-year-old law-abiding adults from carrying concealed firearms is unconstitutional because it flies in the face of the Second Amendment and the nation’s history of firearms regulation, an appeals court said.
The state’s Fourth District Court of Appeal (DCA) handed down the decision June 17 vacating the conviction of an appellant, Jaylen Tyrus Eubanks, who was detained by police in 2024 for carrying an unholstered handgun on his waist. Eubanks, who was 18 at the time, argued that the Florida law allowing only law-abiding Floridians 21 years and older to carry concealed firearms infringed on his Second Amendment rights.
“Merely hindering that right would be sufficient to constitute an infringement,” the court said in its decision. “In this case, the inability of law-abiding adults aged 18 to 20 to use concealed carry available to all law-abiding adults 21 and older would certainly classify as a hindrance and, as such, an infringement of their Second Amendment rights.”
The Florida law lists multiple criteria to qualify to carry a concealed weapon in addition to age, such as not being a habitual alcohol user, not being a felon, not having a recent record of domestic violence and not being committed to a mental institution.
“No historical analogue presented would place 18- to 20-year-olds in the same category as felons, the mentally ill or domestic violence offenders,” the court said.
The State Attorney’s Office in Broward County contended that excluding 18- to 20-year-olds from concealed carry was reasonable considering the disproportionate misuse of firearms by younger people, but the court rejected that argument as not responsive to “the history and tradition of firearm regulation.”
Dennis Fields, membership director of Florida Carry Inc., said the appeals court decision simply levels the playing field for law-abiding adults in Florida. Last year, another appeals court overturned the state’s ban on the open carry of firearms, clearing the way for 18- to 20-year-olds to openly carry firearms gifted to them with a guardian’s permission, Fields said.
“Florida Carry is also cheering on recent court rulings that do away with the Florida three-day waiting period and the federal ban on owning firearms and ammunition just because you occasionally use marijuana,” he told the Florida Record. “The U.S. Congress even paused $200 tax stamps for certain (National Firearms Act) items. This has been the best nine months the Second Amendment has ever seen!”
State Attorney General James Uthmeier also supported the June 17 appeals court decision.
“In another win for the unalienable rights of Floridians, the Fourth DCA agreed with our position that Florida’s law banning adults under 21 from conceal-carrying a firearm is unconstitutional,” Uthmeier said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
He also pledged to work with the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services to implement the court’s order.
The appeals court pointed out that 18-year-olds are able to join the military to defend their nation, and yet such young people have been restricted in exercising the same Second Amendment rights older adults have.
“This burden on law-abiding 18- to 20-year-olds’ right to public carry – and specifically here concealed carry – which is not applicable to any other adults, is a burden that is facially unconstitutional as to 18- to 20-year-olds,” the court said.
