TALLAHASSEE — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday said people being able to openly carry guns is “the law of the state,” after a panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal last week ruled that a longstanding ban was unconstitutional.
Uthmeier sent guidance to prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies. Some had already stopped enforcing the open-carry ban after Wednesday’s opinion.
Uthmeier said in an online post that no other Florida appellate courts had considered the constitutionality of the open-carry ban after two closely watched U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2022 and 2024. As a result, he said “the First District’s decision is binding on all Florida’s trial courts,”
A 1987 law made it a misdemeanor to visibly display guns, though exceptions existed, for example, for hunting. Floridians could carry concealed weapons.
READ MORE: Post-ruling, many law enforcement agencies have stopped enforcing Florida open-carry ban
In the guidance, Uthmeier told prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies to refrain from arresting or putting on trial “law-abiding citizens carrying a firearm in a manner that is visible to others” as Florida courts couldn’t convict such people.
Uthmeier added that state law still requires gun owners to be responsible with their firearms.
“Nothing in the decision permits individuals to menace others with firearms in public, nor does it undermine the state’s authority to prohibit felons from possessing firearms,” the guidance said.
The appeals-court opinion 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.
Pointing to U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Second Amendment cases, a three-judge panel of the Tallahassee-based appeals court said the 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 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.
In his guidance, Uthmeier added that the court ruling doesn’t affect prohibitions on having guns in places such as police stations, courthouses, polling places, government meetings and schools.
Democrats criticized the court opinion, with state Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, on Thursday calling it “tone deaf given the state of violence in this country.”
“Florida’s current laws already robustly protect Second Amendment rights, even to the point of being a Stand Your Ground state. This ruling goes against the common-sense protections that keep our communities safe,” Jones wrote.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said the decision "will have negative long-term effects on our communities and further erode Floridians’ trust in one another.”
“I have a long history advocating for the rights afforded in the Second Amendment and have previously petitioned Courts to uphold those rights for all citizens," she said in a statement on Monday. "However, I strongly believe that the First District Court of Appeals has erred in its recent opinion."
"Nationwide, we are seeing harrowing levels of gun violence, marked by assassinations, school shootings, and people being killed in places of worship," she said. "This is a moment in history when we need to promote safer environments, not embolden those who could abuse the ruling’s intent to sow seeds of terror.
Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power blasted Fried’s opposition to the ruling, saying her "comments show exactly what Democrats believe: Floridians can’t be trusted with their own rights."
"The Court’s decision didn’t create a new right, it reaffirmed what the Constitution already guarantees: law-abiding Floridians have the right to openly bear arms," he said.
WLRN News Staff contributed to this story.
