The mere act of displaying a gun can be seen as an act of aggression, an implied threat. That’s why Florida made it illegal to walk around with a handgun on your hip, or a semiautomatic rifle slung over your shoulder.
The gun owner might not see anything sinister in their display, but for many, the sight of a weapon evokes images we’ve had to imagine too many times already — teachers shielding children with their bodies against a killer stalking their halls; young people dancing in the early-morning hours until they realized they were hearing gunshots instead of drumbeats; people happily gathered in a restaurant to compete in video games until a gunman opened fire.
FSU students who endured Parkland shooting urge Florida lawmakers to defend gun control law
But residents will have to learn to live with the flashbacks. Florida’s ban on open carry was blown away earlier this month, with an appellate court ruling that invoked the Second Amendment and a recent federal case to say that Florida must allow open display of firearms in public. It takes effect on Thursday.
Gun-rights advocates and law-enforcement officials urged Floridians not to panic (though that number didn’t include unelected Attorney General James Uthmeier, who merely celebrated that open-carry was “the law of the state”). They pointed out that many other states allow open carry of firearms, with few issues. And law enforcement leaders across the state were quick with reassurances that people would still be restricted from carrying firearms in a list of so-called “sensitive places,” which includes schools, courthouses, government meeting chambers, jails, bars and several other places where most would agree that guns don’t really belong. Private property owners would also still have the leeway to ban guns from their premises.
We want to believe — we really do — that those people are right. But we already know they are wrong.
First, Floridians, unlike residents of Georgia, Kentucky and 29 other states that allow some form of open carry, are not used to seeing firearms openly displayed in public places. Neither are city and county law enforcement officers. And we can’t help but note that Central Florida, in particular, is home to significant numbers of Proud Boys and other fringe groups who thought nothing of storming the Capitol to steal an election. The chances of a forced confrontation seem high.
Second, those protected places might not be as protected as it seems. Striking down the prohibition on open carry leaves gaps in other protective statutes. One good example: The language that lays out the list of sensitive places, which in addition to those mentioned above, includes jails, polling places, airport terminals, career centers and athletic events from Little League to professional soccer — specifically bans handguns and any weapon that’s carried concealed. But the list of banned weapons doesn’t include rifles, shotguns or even military-style weapons like AK-47s. It gets worse: Jacksonville attorney Eric Friday, who represented the defendant in the case that was decided early this month and is general counsel for pro-gun Florida Carry, says that statute might also allow for the intrusion of some handguns.
That will come as a shock to many people — including professors, court clerks, elected local leaders and others who have been told, over the past few weeks, that the law granted them some measure of safety from potentially confronting an obviously armed person with news that person may not like.
Worst of all, this court ruling puts a tremendous burden on Florida law enforcement officers, who in this era of mass shootings are trained to always regard the presence of firearms as a potential threat.
“Permitless and open-carry laws put law enforcement in the dangerous position of having to determine, sometimes within a split second, whether someone with a gun is exercising their rights, or intends to do harm,” Orange County Sheriff John Mina said in a 2023 Sentinel op-ed, written at a time when lawmakers were considering loosening laws around the carrying of guns. “In a world where my deputies’ heads are on a pivot, constantly looking out for active shooters, doing all they can to protect this community from violence, permitless carry would make their jobs exponentially harder.”
More than most law enforcement officers, Mina knows what he’s talking about: He was Orlando’s police chief in June 2016, when the Pulse nightclub became the site of what was, at the time, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
Friday says the conflict between Florida’s law and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was destined to lead to the state’s law being stricken — and a 2020 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court made that even more obvious. But that doesn’t change the fact that Uthmeier’s response to the decision, by the First District Court of Appeals, was to shrug and proclaim that open carry was now the law of the land.
Why didn’t he appeal this case to the Florida Supreme Court? It’s possible they would have disagreed with the appellate court’s ruling, or at least acknowledged the consequences of abruptly ripping the open-carry law from statute books. As Attorney General, it’s Uthmeier’s job to defend state law, whether or not he likes it (Notably, pro-gun attorney general Pam Bondi defended Florida’s gun restrictions, acknowledging that her duty overcame her personal beliefs.) It’s ironic that Uthmeier, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis, punished Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell after claiming that she wasn’t enforcing laws she didn’t care for.
We’re also wondering why the attorney general didn’t see fit to communicate with local government officials who thought their offices would automatically remain gun-free. It’s clear, from Uthmeier’s quotes in a story by the News Service of Florida, that he was aware that so-called sensitive places were not, in fact, off limits to guns. Didn’t they deserve even a small amount of time to consider how they would react when people came into their offices or meetings, visibly armed?
It’s ironic that the most responsible reaction to this ruling has come from Florida Carry. Eric Friday said Monday that his organization was working with legislators to come up with language that would return protection to most of the locations that had it before this month’s court ruling.
This isn’t the first time Floridians have seen their unelected attorney general (or the governor who appointed them) act with callous disregard for the opinions and genuine fears of the people they are meant to serve. Floridians deserve better. If Uthmeier can’t keep them safe from gun violence, he should have at least given them fair warning.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
