TALLAHASSEE — Second Amendment groups and a Palm Beach County gun owner Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Florida law that bars people from openly carrying firearms.
Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation and gun owner Richard Hughes filed the lawsuit in South Florida and contended that the open-carry ban does not meet a legal test that such restrictions must be consistent with the nation’s “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 lawsuit comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature last year eliminated a longstanding requirement that people obtain state concealed-weapons licenses to be able to carry guns. But lawmakers did not allow people to openly carry firearms, drawing criticism from some Second Amendment activists who said the changes did not go far enough.