TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s court of appeals declared Wednesday a state law banning the release of firearms was unconstitutional, calling the law incompatible with the second amendment and the right to have a weapon.
The first local appeals court issued a sentence on July 4, 2022, in a case arising from the arrest of a man standing at a major intersection in downtown Pensacola.
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The decision by the three-judge panel overturns the conviction of Stanley McDaniels of Escambia County, Florida Panhandle. He also denied his sentence and found that the state failed to show that the law was consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm control.”
“There is no historical tradition in favour of Florida’s ban on open carry. On the contrary, history confirms that the right to possess arms in public inevitably includes the right to do so openly,” Judge Stephanie Ray wrote in an opinion attended by Lorilow and Judge M. Kemaly Thomas.
“That’s not that open carry is absolute or immune from reasonable regulations,” the opinion continued. “But what the state may not do is to completely erase the right thing for ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens.”
FL GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis praised the decision in a post from X. He called on lawmakers to pass the open carry bill.
“This decision will match the policy of the state with my longstanding position with the majority of states across the union,” writes Desantis. “In the end, the court correctly ruled that the text of the Second Amendment – “keep and endure the weapon” – saying what it means and that it means what it says. ”
Legalizing open carry has long been the main focus of state gun rights activists, opposing the slate of restrictions implemented by the Republican-controlled Congress in Florida in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Florida Attorney General James Usmieyer said in a post on X that he “fully supports the court’s decision” to break the state law that his office is responsible for defending.
“This is a huge victory for the Floridians’ Second Amendment,” Usmeyer said, adding, “Our God-given right of self-defense is essential.”
Usmeyer, who was appointed by DeSantis to the Post in February, has previously said he would not defend the state’s gun laws, which he believes his office is unconstitutional.
Kate Payne is a legion of the Associated Press/America Statehouse News Initiative report. Report for America is a non-profit, national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on infiltrated issues.
