People with guns can begin carrying them openly on streets and inside businesses or restaurants where owners don’t object, from the Florida Keys to the Panhandle, the attorney general says.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier clarified Monday the ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee – whose jurisdiction runs from Gainesville through the Panhandle. Uthmeier said the court’s ruling was effective “now,” but his spokesman said there was a 15-day window to exhaust an opportunity for an appeal that will never happen.
The three-judge appeals court panel threw out the state’s previous ban on openly displaying guns, ruling it unconstitutional. Uthmeier said the new ruling applies statewide and was effective upon the court’s decision last week.
Uthmeier’s announcement was important because some sheriffs – including Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri in St. Petersburg – had noted that much of Florida wasn’t under the district appeals court’s jurisdiction, so it wasn’t immediately clear whether the ruling was binding for everyone.
“We will follow the law and respect statutes and court decisions,” Gualtieri wrote on social media. “However, we have to know what the law is and where it is applicable before we can decide what and how to enforce the law.”
Uthmeier, an ardent Second Amendment advocate who has sought to expand gun rights in Florida, settled the matter: “As of last week, open carry is the law of the state,” he said.
Uthmeier confirmed his office would not appeal the decision to the Florida Supreme Court because he supports the ruling.
Uthmeier also said his office will no longer defend convictions or prosecutions of Florida’s decades-old law that permitted people only to carry weapons that were concealed from view. Breaking the law was considered a criminal misdemeanor, with punishments up to 60 days in jail and potential penalties that could prevent a person from buying or possessing guns.
The attorney general’s announcement opens the door to legal challenges across Florida, from defendants whose weapons cases are pending or from those already convicted. It also effectively ties the hands of Florida’s elected state prosecutors, who are responsible for everyday criminal prosecutions across the state.
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In Gainesville, State Attorney Brian Kramer noted his region in north-central Florida was covered by the court’s jurisdiction. He said even before Uthmeier’s guidance that he would cease prosecutions.
“I cannot in good faith prosecute this crime, both pending cases and future arrests,” he wrote Friday.
Kramer told police officers and sheriff’s deputies not to arrest someone merely for carrying a pistol or rifle openly.
In Tallahassee, the Legislature for years has shut down efforts to set aside Florida’s law banning openly carrying guns, citing input from law enforcement officials who worried the state – sometimes called the Gunshine State – would become an even Wilder West. Leaders in the Capitol said they were still digesting the court’s ruling and its consequences but so far haven’t identified a legislative solution to offer when lawmakers reconvene in January.
The attorney general’s new legal guidance cautioned that it was still illegal in Florida to display guns in a rude, careless, angry or threatening manner. Florida law still allows businesses – including Disney World, supermarkets, restaurants and movie theaters – to set their own rules about whether to allow guns to be carried openly on their property.
People with guns displayed openly who won’t leave such businesses can be charged with armed trespass.
Florida also still bans people from carrying weapons in bars or even in parts of restaurants devoted to alcohol sales.
A spokesman for Uthmeier, Jae Williams, said defendants convicted of openly carrying guns prior to last week’s court decision broke the law as it was interpreted then. Williams said the attorney general’s office will not proactively work to reverse prior convictions.
“It was the law of the land at the time,” he said. “There’s not going to be re-visiting, at least not from our office, at this time.”
Last week’s decision involved a case in Pensacola against Stanley Victor McDaniels, 42, who deliberately flouted the law on the Fourth of July in 2022. He waved his hand at cars near a busy intersection while holding a copy of the U.S. Constitution, with a loaded Beretta pistol tucked visibly in his waistband. At the time, McDaniels held a valid Florida concealed weapons permit.
“McDaniels was cooperative. He explained that he wanted to take this case to the Supreme Court,” the appeals judges wrote.
The court’s decision threw out the misdemeanor case against McDaniels, who had been convicted by a jury of openly carrying a weapon. The judge had sentenced McDaniels to six months of probation and 50 hours of community service. He was also banned from owning any guns and had to give up his Beretta pistol. The appeals ruling overturned his conviction and reversed his sentence.
Sean Caranna of New Smyrna Beach, the head of a gun rights group that worked with McDaniels’ lawyer, said in an interview that the attorney general was obligated to halt prosecutions. Caranna is executive director of Florida Open Carry Inc.
“I’m glad he’s understood the clarity and the rightness of the decision,” Caranna said. “There is no identifiable history of a tradition of banning the open carry of arms in our nation.”
Florida was one of only a handful of states banning gun owners from carrying a pistol on their hip or slinging a rifle over their shoulder in public.
Caranna said he expects an increase in the number of people openly carrying firearms then once the ruling’s novelty wears off, he doesn’t expect it to be prevalent.
The court’s ruling – and Uthemeier’s guidance – doesn’t affect other state and federal limits on carrying guns, such as on school or college campuses, courthouses or federal buildings.
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at s.ranta@freshtakeflorida.com.
