Florida appeals court strikes down ban on openly carrying guns

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – In a major decision, a state appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Florida’s ban on openly carrying guns is unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, pointing to U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Second Amendment issues, said the open-carry ban is incompatible with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

“No historical tradition supports Florida’s open carry ban,” Judge Stephanie Ray wrote in a 20-page opinion joined by Judges Lori Rowe and M. Kemmerly Thomas. “To the contrary, history confirms that the right to bear arms in public necessarily includes the right to do so openly. 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.”

The ruling came in a challenge filed by Stanley Victor McDaniels, who was convicted of openly carrying a gun on the Fourth of July in 2022 in Pensacola. It also came after years of legislative debate about potentially repealing the open-carry ban — a position supported this week by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Florida Supreme Court in 2015 upheld the constitutionality of the open-carry ban. But in Wednesday’s opinion, Ray said a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen governs the issue. That decision focused on looking at the “historical tradition” of firearms regulation.

Ray wrote that the Florida Supreme Court’s decision, which stemmed from a 2012 arrest in St. Lucie County, “does not provide controlling precedent, and this court must evaluate McDaniels’ claim under the (U.S.) Supreme Court’s text, history, and tradition standard.”

“Because the Second Amendment’s plain text encompasses the open carrying of firearms in public, that conduct is presumptively protected by the Constitution,” Wednesday’s opinion said. “The state therefore bears the heavy burden of establishing a relevant historical tradition of firearms regulation that justifies its prohibition. The state has not met that burden. It is not enough to rely on a generalized tradition of firearms regulation, for at that level of abstraction almost any law could be sustained.”

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Florida has allowed people to carry concealed weapons for decades but has barred openly carrying firearms. DeSantis on Monday said he would renew a push for lawmakers to end the open-carry prohibition.

“We should be an open-carry state,” DeSantis said during an appearance in Plant City.

Both DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier praised the ruling on X.com.

But the issue has not made it through the Legislature in the past. For example, Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, has pointed to opposition expressed by law-enforcement officers.

“Let me be clear about this, I’ve supported law enforcement my entire life. It’s the way I was raised, and I’ve been super-consistent as a legislator to support law enforcement in Florida. And I’d encourage you to check that record,” Albritton told reporters in November. “And I stand with them today in opposition (of allowing people to openly carry guns). They oppose it. I trust my law-enforcement officials, and that’s where I stand.”

Orange County Sheriff John Mina issued the following statement to News 6 on the open carry ruling:

“As a law enforcement officer who has been serving this community for nearly 35 years, I vehemently oppose open carry for the State of Florida. I’m not alone. Most law enforcement leaders – even in states that allow it - oppose open carry laws. In places like Florida – which have been devastated by mass shootings - just the presence of a heavily armed person in a public place is enough to create a sense of panic.”

Wednesday’s opinion drew a distinction between allowing people to carry concealed weapons and openly carry guns. It said “open carry and concealed carry regulations may appear alike if the metric is simply ‘manner of carry.’ But under the proper metric — whether the regulation preserves the ability to bear arms as historically understood — they are not relevantly similar.”

“The state has not shown that open carry and concealed carry were understood to be interchangeable,” Ray wrote. “To the contrary, the historical record, including the very sources the state invokes, demonstrates that the two were regarded as distinct, and that open carry was the default mode of bearing arms that preserved the core of the Second Amendment right.”

[READ the Florida appeals court ruling]