On September 15, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier declared that open carry is “state law,” according to Politico and the SunSentinel. He said Florida residents were free to openly carry firearms throughout the state, following an appeals court ruling that overturned a 1987 ban. The law criminalized open carry of firearms in the Sunshine State, with exceptions such as hunting. Floridians were, however, allowed to carry concealed weapons.
The Republican attorney general, appointed earlier this year by Governor Ron DeSantis and campaigning for re-election in 2026, clarified to law enforcement and prosecutors that the 1st District Court of Appeal’s decision applied to all of Florida. He wrote on X in a message accompanying the notice: “This means that as of last week, open carry is the law of the state.”
It should be noted that the attorney general made this statement at a time when law enforcement authorities were expressing disagreement over how to handle cases of open carry.
Uthmeier asked prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to stop arresting or prosecuting “law-abiding citizens who carry a firearm in a visible manner,” as Florida courts cannot convict such individuals. He added that state law still requires gun owners to behave responsibly with their weapons: “Nothing in this decision authorizes individuals to threaten others with firearms in public, nor does it undermine the state’s authority to prohibit criminals from possessing firearms.”
The ruling follows an appeal by Stanley Victor McDaniels, who was convicted of brandishing a weapon on July 4, 2022, in Pensacola, in northwest Florida. The judges of the Tallahassee Court of Appeals ruled that the ban on open carry did not correspond to the historical American tradition of the right to bear arms, based on U.S. Supreme Court precedents related to the Second Amendment.
In a 20-page opinion, Judge Stephanie Ray, joined by two other judges, wrote: « No historical tradition justifies Florida’s ban on open carry. On the contrary, history confirms that the right to carry weapons in public necessarily includes the right to do so openly. This does not mean that open carry is absolute or exempt from reasonable regulation. But what the state cannot do is completely suppress this right for ordinary, law-abiding adult citizens. »
While in 2015 the Florida Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ban on open carry, Ray said that a 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen governs the issue.
Democrats have criticized the court’s opinion.
However, it should be noted that carrying firearms in Florida is prohibited in courts, bars, schools, university campuses, and large amusement parks such as Disney World, and that an armed person can be criminally prosecuted if they refuse to leave the premises after being asked to do so by the owner of a private property.
