A Firearm is Nothing to be Ashamed of

Two days after Charlie Kirk was shot, I have learned I am now allowed to carry a firearm–not just a pistol–openly in at least 32 Florida counties. The relevant court ruling was published on the day of the shooting.

That is certainly interesting.

For a long time, I have suspected that God has chosen to allow Americans to arm themselves. Gun rights have been expanding, and it seems inexplicable to me, absent a supernatural explanation.

Why would God support the proliferation and carry of firearms? I don’t know, but I can make guesses.

1. There are a lot of people here who aren’t doing a great job of receiving God’s direct protection, but he would still like to give them a chance against those who hate Christians and Jews.

2. The tribulation is coming, one of the features will be bloodshed, and the weapons the raptured leave behind, along with those possessed by others, will facilitate it.

People say Florida is a gun-friendly state, and overall, I believe that is correct, but when it comes to open carry, we have lagged behind fierce right-wing strongholds like Washington and Delaware. In fact, Florida was so backward (Or is it forward?), we were in a 4-state group along with California, Illinois, and New York. Right there with us: the crime-free paradise known as the District of Columbia.

How did we get to open carry so quickly?

A local political candidate named Stan McDaniels decided to stand beside a busy road, waving a copy of the Constitution while carrying a pistol that was clearly visible. He was trying to pick a legal fight, and he succeeded. He was arrested and prosecuted. This happened in Escambia County, in the panhandle. About as blue as a ripe tomato.

He said he wanted to take the issue to the United States Supreme Court, but that was never necessary. The Supreme Court doesn’t block open carry. Florida legislators and courts are the problem.

McDaniels was convicted and sentenced, and following his own plan, he appealed. The First District Court of Appeal ruled in his favor, and our Attorney General is not going to fight. In fact, he is thrilled.

Imagine where we would be if DeSantis had lost the election to Andrew Gillum, the homosexual pervert who was found unconscious, naked, and lying in vomit in a hotel room where he and two other homosexuals went, along with performance drugs (Trimix) homosexuals inject into their penises. Imagine the kind of attorney general we would have.

It’s embarrassing for a lawyer to admit, but I am somewhat confused about the law’s status at the moment. I never practiced much in state courts. Let’s see if I can unravel this. My legal opinion is worth what you’re paying for it, so don’t trust me.

Based on a 1991 Florida Supreme Court decision (Pardo), where there is no conflict among circuits, a ruling by one DCA is applicable to lower courts (trial courts) statewide. If there is a conflict, however, a trial court adheres to the position of the appeal court in its circuit.

The McDaniels ruling does not conflict with any other DCA rulings. Unbelievably, it was a case of first impression. What has the NRA been doing with our money all these years?

Conclusion: open carry is now legal everywhere in Florida. Problem: some jurisdictions are waiting for the decision to be finalized, so liberal counties may continue arresting people. That means the only people who can exhale with confidence are within the 1st DCA’s jurisdictional area.

The state has a certain amount of time to appeal the decision. That’s not going to happen. When the period lapses, the law will be binding on every trial court in Florida, with no weasel room for blue counties.

Could there still be a conflict eventually? I guess so. Maybe there are cases currently on appeal in other districts.

I believe these cases would have to be in the appeal process right now, since trial courts can’t send new ones up. They have to dismiss.

The 1st DCA has direct jurisdiction over 32 counties, and sadly, I’m not in one.

My sheriff has proclaimed he will not enforce the open-carry law, and so has the relevant city PD, so now I can go to Walmart with an AK slung over my shoulder if I am so inclined. Unless Walmart posts a sign, in which case they have the legal authority to make me put my gun back in my car. Regardless of the ruling, private citizens and companies have the power to ban guns on their property and thereby offend all sorts of people who like exercising a critical civil right.

Can they ban open carry while permitting concealed carry? I don’t know. If you can ban tank tops, I guess you can ban open carry.

You can tell I’m happy about the ruling. Because I want to display a rifle at Walmart? No. Open carry has an obvious drawback. It has a deterrent effect, but it would put me in a position where I would have to be extremely attentive to my surroundings in order to keep criminals from trying to take my gun. It also disturbs snowbirds and yankee transplants needlessly.

When I carry in a front pocket, I make it very difficult for a criminal to figure out I have a gun, and I also make it hard for them to take. They can’t just stroll by and snatch it.

The Second Amendment is crippled when open carry is banned, because the founders expected us to be able to carry military-grade firearms, suitable for militia service, in public. That means long guns. You can’t conceal a rifle, and Florida’s concealed-carry laws banned concealed rifles anyway.

I’m happy about the ruling because there are many situations in which open carry is appropriate, helpful, and/or important. I’m also happy because a dumb and highly technical law is a bear trap for well-intended citizens who should not be turned into felons because they’re not great at parsing statutes.

The open-carry law has been used as a tool to persecute good people who didn’t think they were doing anything illegal. It was a “gotcha” law. We shouldn’t have laws like that.

I may have violated the open carry law, and I’m an attorney. Open carry is legal on private property. I may have carried openly, illegally, while mowing my yard. In the past, I thought a little strip of property outside my fence belonged to me, and I may have carried while mowing it. That would have been a felony, because I later found out the land belonged to a neighbor.

A neighbor on another side voted for Biden, so he and his wife can’t be trusted to respect my civil rights. What if one of them had seen me out front with a Glock 20 in a Miami Special shoulder holster?

The practical answer is: nothing. My sheriff would have laughed at them if they had called, and no local prosecutor would have gone forward with the case had I been arrested. But I would have been guilty. There are 23 million people in Florida, not all are in sane counties, and even if I was in no danger, other people surely did the same kind of thing, and they could have ended up in the hoosegow.

Although my county is outside the sweet zone for now, because my sheriff and the biggest city police department have already proclaimed their intention to ignore open carry offenses, I am covered, at least in unincorporated areas and the largest metro area. I don’t know what the cops in the tiny towns and cities will do, but it seems safe to guess nearly all of them will go along.

There are only two other town departments here. One is currently letting the sheriff handle law enforcement, so no problems there. The other serves the town where I buy groceries most of the time. I have carried big knives openly there, because this has never been banned. No one cared. I would guess the police department is so small, they don’t think much about press releases regarding changes in the law.

It is interesting that the open-carry law applied to guns but not knives. A big knife is extremely dangerous in a crowded place.

I have been inconsistent, carrying a gun in my pocket and a knife visibly. I wasn’t very concerned about having the knife taken. I live on a farm, and a sheath knife is much more convenient than a folding knife, so I like carrying one. I didn’t think of sheath knives primarily as weapons, but that’s what knives are, regardless of the intended use.

The State’s Attorney’s Office for my county has not issued a statement about open carry yet, but I think I can guess where he’ll come down, assuming he wants to stay in office.

I don’t plan to carry openly, but smart people make some effort to know the law. I might need to carry openly some day, so I should know the law beforehand instead of Googling feverishly under stress.

If there is a funny side to all this, it is that some blue counties got caught in the ruling directly because they are 1st-DCA counties. The county to my north, Alachua, is home to the University of Florida, and it is heavily infected with the woke mind virus. I would guess dramatic performances are in the works. Maybe students and employees will splatter themselves with organic non-GMO ketchup and lie down in groups.

Gadsden County is overwhelmingly black and liberal, and it is also under the 1st DCA’s jurisdiction. Florida State University and our capital are in Leon County, and it is also suffering from the blue flu.

I feel like making predictions. I think that if I go to any big store this week, I will see somebody carrying openly. I think very, very few people will do it. Mainly isolated activists who feel like celebrating.

Will our new freedom result in a crime surge, as liberals are surely predicting? Of course it will, because the ban completely prevented criminals from carrying openly while shooting people, and every state that has open carry is like Mosul on a bad day. Not.

It may help some criminals plan, and there will surely be guns snatched from foolish people who carry behind their backs and so on, but overall, it will reduce crime. That’s my prediction.

The knowledge that some civilians carry concealed weapons does a certain amount to discourage crime, but criminals are generally stupid and impulsive, so some need a stronger hint. I think seeing people carrying weapons will put the fear of God (or at least Gaston Glock) into many of them.

I doubt Florida will start to look like Somalia, with shiny rifles on display everywhere. Normal states that already had open carry don’t have this issue.

The ruling was handed down by a male judge and two girls. I wonder what feminists are saying about them today. I know many are busy celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk in front of his wife and small children, so they may not have noticed the ruling.

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I thought I was right when I said the McDaniels case was a case of first impression, meaning the issue of whether Florida’s open carry ban is unconstitutional had never been considered by a Florida court. Was I right? I’m trying to decide. It comes down to hair-splitting; the reason lawyers have to go to school.

I have since learned that a 2017 Florida Supreme Court case, Norman v. State, held that the open carry ban did not violate the US or Florida constitutions. But there is a twist.

Norman was decided before the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen. In that case, the court did away with a balancing test that was used in Norman. The McDaniels panel referred to this in its opinion. No balancing test, no ban.

So is the McDaniels case a case of first impression or not? The issue of the constitutionality of the ban has been considered before, but the issue of the ban’s constitutionality in view of Bruen has not. Far as I know. If you want a solid answer based on serious research, pay me.

It looks like I was wrong to think McDaniels was a case of first impression because the constitutionality of the ban had already been confirmed, but it’s still a case of first impression because it considers the issue of whether Bruen invalidated Norman. Different issue.

Gun-unfriendly counties outside the 1st DCA’s geographical area are now claiming there is a conflict between the circuits, because the 4th DCA, which decided Norman, upheld the ban. That seems disingenuous (lawyer talk for “dishonest”) to me.

The definition of the term “first impression” seems to be under attack.

I always say this: a law doesn’t mean anything until a court decides what it means. Most laymen don’t know this. If Congress passes a law saying it’s illegal to pick your nose in church, and a federal judge in Chicken Bend, Arkansas, says it really means you can’t open your gifts on Christmas Eve, it means you can’t open your gifts on Christmas Eve, within the court’s geographical jurisdiction. At least until a higher court disagrees.

Courts have been known to misconstrue laws on purpose, in bad faith. This is why there were two Brown v. Board of Education cases. The holding in the first forced Southern states to implement desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” and dishonest judges pretended that meant “very slowly.” The second case cleared this up.

Courts misconstrue laws on purpose, and so do prosecutors and the police. I think the counties that reject McDaniels are out of order.

In any case, it’s the law right now in the 32 counties under the 1st DCA’s jurisdiction, and it will remain so unless other jurisdictions manage to find a way to generate a conflict and get it before the Florida Supreme Court. Even then, it looks like it will probably be affirmed.