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Attorneys for Gun Owners of America filed a lawsuit to challenge a longstanding ban on openly carrying firearms in the state of Florida, which otherwise allows permitless carry.
Florida lawmakers passed a law last year under which residents do not need to obtain government permits in order to carry their firearms concealed. The new law nevertheless left intact a ban on openly carrying firearms that has been in effect since 1893. Gun Owners of America hopes to have that prohibition deemed unconstitutional through their lawsuit.
“Despite its reputation as a largely gun-friendly state, Florida inexplicably continues to prohibit the peaceable carrying of firearms in an open and unconcealed manner,” they said. “This blatant infringement of the Second Amendment right to ‘bear arms’ runs counter to this nation’s historical tradition and would have criminalized the very colonists who openly carried their muskets and mustered on the greens at Lexington and Concord to fight for their independence.”
The lawsuit contended that the 1893 ban on open carry was meant to target newly freed black citizens, while white citizens “enjoyed de facto immunity from enforcement.”
Attorneys added that Florida is one of very few states which ban open carry and that “the vast majority of states permit the open carry of all manner of firearms” without permits.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed the constitutional carry legislation last year and voiced his support for open carry even as Republican lawmakers, who maintain supermajorities in the Florida Legislature, did not advance a bill that allowed for open carry. The enacted version of the bill also bans adults under twenty-one years old from carrying firearms.
Gun Owners of America previously criticized Florida as the “worst Republican-controlled state in the nation for Second Amendment rights” since they continue to have “a mandatory waiting period, red flag laws, numerous gun-free zones, and a blanket ban on open carry.”
Luiz Valdes, the Florida state director for Gun Owners of America, wrote in one opinion piece that “those who know the ins and outs of lawmaking in Tallahassee know that Republican lawmakers have been merely throwing gun owners cheap table-scraps, while at the same time, they’re seriously considering further restrictions on Second Amendment rights.”
