Attorney General James Uthmeier stated Friday his office would no longer defend convictions of the state’s ban on bump stocks on appeal, asserting the 2018 law outlawing the firearm accessories is unconstitutional.
“As currently written, the overly broad law appears to restrict the use of trigger enhancements used by firearms owners for lawful purposes, subjecting them to five years in prison,” Uthmeier stated on X.
The social media post also highlighted a formal legal opinion from his office, which states the law “imposes a categorical prohibition on an entire class of firearm components that can increase a semiautomatic weapon’s rate of fire. But semiautomatic firearms with these and similar structural modifications are bearable arms covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
Bump stocks are devices that increase the rate of fire on a semiautomatic weapon. They became a target for gun control advocates after the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas, where a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds from his 32-floor hotel balcony onto an outdoor concert, killing 58 people and wounding more than 400 others.
The federal government’s ban on bump stocks, though, was overturned by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2024. The 6-3 ruling found that because the device still requires a trigger on a semiautomatic weapon to be “released and reengaged to fire each additional shot,” they do not effectively convert the weapon into an automatic firearm, as supporters of the ban contended. Automatic weapons, which allow multiple rounds to be fired with one pull on the trigger, are banned under federal law.
But Florida’s state-level ban on bump stocks remained.
Florida lawmakers included a ban on bump stocks in a large bill in 2018, following the Feb. 14 mass shooting that year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which left 17 dead, including 14 children.
The law included funding for school safety measures, a new “guardian” program to train armed school personnel to thwart mass shootings, in addition to three main gun control measures: the ban on bump stocks, increasing the age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21, and enacted “red flag” laws allowing police to seize the weapons of those deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The measure passed with support from both parties, but it also split Republicans and Democrats alike. Some Republicans balked at the gun control measures and voted against it. Some Democrats, especially Black members, voted against it over the prospect of arming school personnel. Then-Gov. Rick Scott signed the measure into law and has defended it as a necessary tool to prevent other mass shootings.
But Governor-elect Byron Donalds, who was a member of the Florida House at the time, voted against it and has spoken out against the gun control measures in the law on the campaign trail.
