Florida gun suit challenges state's ban on open-carry

A Florida gun lawsuit filed earlier this week is challenging the state's open-carry ban, claiming that the legislation violates the Second Amendment. 

Florida eliminated a longstanding requirement last year that residents obtain state concealed-weapons licenses to be able to carry guns. But the state does not allow people to openly carry firearms, according to CBS News.

The Second Amendment groups Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, and gun owner Richard Hughes filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, claiming that it would not pass previous legal muster that gun laws must meet the "historical tradition" of firearms regulation.

"Despite its reputation as a largely gun-friendly state, Florida inexplicably continues to prohibit the peaceable carrying of firearms in an open and unconcealed manner," the lawsuit said. "The blatant infringement of the Second Amendment right to 'bear arms' runs counter to this nation's historical tradition and would have criminalized the very colonists who openly carried their muskets and mustered on the greens at Lexington and Concord to fight for their independence."

The state Supreme Court upheld the open-carry ban in a ruling in 2017, by arguing that Florida law "regulates only one manner of bearing arms and does not impair the exercise of the fundamental right to bear arms." But the lawsuit claimed the ruling was wrong based on federal Supreme Court precedent. 

"According to the United States Supreme Court, the only way Florida can justify such an extreme restriction is to show a broad and enduring Founding-era historical tradition of governments banning the peaceable open carry of firearms by law-abiding persons, such that demonstrates that the Founders never understood the Second Amendment to protect open carry in the first place," the lawsuit said. "That is an absurd proposition and a hurdle that Florida simply cannot bear."

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.