On September 10, Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal looked at the state’s law against “open carry” of firearms, looked at the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment, and noticed that the latter supersedes the former.

Five days later, Florida Attorney General James Uthmier issued “guidance to Florida’s prosecutors and law enforcement,” notifying them that “as of last week, open carry is the law of the state.”

Well, not “as of last week,” actually. Try “as of 1845,” the year Florida became a state. Per Madison v. Marbury, “an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.” It just took a long time for the fake “law” to be noticed and nixed by a court.

Such a straightforwardly correct court ruling, and its relatively quick acceptance by a power-hungry politician whom one might expect to reflexively contest it, may seem strange even by Florida standards (interestingly, the now-common “Florida Man” phenomenon emerged a few months after I moved to the state … make of that what you will).

Even stranger, though, is the reaction I’m seeing from some hoplophobes — people who suffer from an irrational fear of guns — in Florida (and elsewhere, but let’s stick to Florida).

Yes, they’re scared, but that kind of goes with the whole “irrational fear” thing, doesn’t it?

For some reason, though, they say they’re MORE scared of “open carry” than of “concealed carry.” They’re more spooked by the thought of seeing a single 9mm pistol on someone’s belt at the grocery store than by the knowledge that there are 20 others, concealed inside jackets, purses, etc., in that same store.

Florida only recently became constitutionally compliant on “concealed carry” with the elimination of its permit requirement, but that permit system had already been in place for decades. Any time you’re in public in Florida — or in any of the other 49 states — there’s a good chance that someone within your visual field is packing a pistol inside his or her jacket, purse, etc.

If I suffered from an irrational fear of a ubiquitous inanimate object — more than 100 million Americans own more than half a billion guns; that only a tiny fraction of a single percent are ever used to kill people is what makes the fear so irrational — I’d much rather be able to see and avoid that object and those carrying it than live in constant knowledge that they’re probably all around me, all the time. Just sayin’ …

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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