Uthmeier embraces DOJ opinion finding federal handgun sales ban unconstitutional

Filed 51m ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House from Washington, DC · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel released a 49-page opinion declaring that federal statutes barring licensed dealers from selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds violate the Second Amendment. Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser argued that people old enough to vote, serve on juries, and be drafted should not be barred from buying handguns.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who already refused to defend the state's post-Parkland ban on long-gun sales to under-21s, celebrated the opinion as validation, while Gov. DeSantis and gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds have pushed to repeal the state provision. The Florida House has passed repeal bills four sessions running, blocked each time in the Senate.

Everytown for Gun Safety's John Feinblatt countered that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of older adults, matching a Florida Department of Law Enforcement finding from 2020. Democratic candidate David Jolly says the existing law should stay in place.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

The federal opinion is about handguns, the Florida fight is about long guns, and somehow one is being waved around to settle the other like a coupon from a different store. Nobody arguing this seems bothered that the numbers on gun homicides by young adults haven't changed, only the enthusiasm for citing them has. When the loudest voices for repeal are also the ones who already decided not to defend the law in court, it is hard to call this a fresh legal discovery rather than a plan that finally found its excuse.

Source: Read the original at Florida Phoenix → Scored: The Show Must Be Go · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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