The professional-freedom group Gun House owners of America just lately filed a lawsuit within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of Florida difficult the state’s decades-long ban on the open carry of firearms.
The statute, which makes it “illegal for any particular person to overtly keep on or about his or her particular person any firearm or electrical weapon or machine,” has been in impact and infringing on the rights of lawful Floridians since 1893. Regardless of Florida’s gun-friendly standing, it’s considered one of solely 4 states the place open carry remains to be wholly banned.
And whereas Florida has joined greater than half of the opposite states within the union as constitutional or “permitless” carry states, that regulation solely applies to hid firearms, not these carried overtly.
“Florida lawmakers declare to be pro-gun, however yr after yr, they’ve refused to repeal the 1987 ban on open carry, leaving Floridians within the very anti-gun firm of New York, Illinois, and California the place that is additionally prohibited,” stated Erich Pratt, GOA senior vp. “GOA has been left with no selection however to sue the state, particularly since GOA’s open carry invoice was blocked by the Republican legislative management throughout the 2024 session’s first week.”
The lawsuit, GOA v. Pearson, argues that the regulation is unconstitutional as a result of it immediately infringes on the Second Modification proper of Floridians to maintain and bear arms.
“Regardless of its status as a largely gun-friendly state, Florida inexplicably continues to ban the peaceful carrying of firearms in an open and unconcealed method,” the grievance states.
“This blatant infringement of the Second Modification proper to ‘bear arms’ runs counter to this nation’s historic custom and would have criminalized the very colonists who overtly carried their muskets and mustered on the greens at Lexington and Harmony to struggle for his or her independence.”
The grievance factors out {that a} full prohibition on open carry of firearms is immediately unconstitutional beneath the Second Modification.
“The Second Amendments plain textual content contradicts the notion that an open carry ban is permissible—in any case, the modification was designed to ensure the flexibility of the physique politic to kind a “well-regulated Militia”—that means well-trained, armed to the enamel, and competent to withstand oppression from overseas aggressors and home tyrants,” the grievance states. “No standard navy drive in historical past ever has been confined to covert carry of concealable firearms (ie., Small handguns), and thus the Second Modification was designed to safe one thing way more substantial than carrying a snub-nosed revolver in a single’s pocket whereas grocery buying.”
As GOA additionally talked about within the lawsuit, the Florida open carry ban was adopted a long time after Reconstruction and greater than a century after the Second Modification was ratified. “To make issues worse, that 1893 carry ban overtly focused solely a disfavored subset of the inhabitants—newly freed Blacks—whereas Whites loved de facto immunity from enforcement,” in accordance with the grievance.
Ultimately, GOA is asking the courtroom to declare that the statute violates each the Second and Fourteenth amendments, and preliminarily and completely enjoin all Florida regulation enforcement from imposing the regulation.
