A judge in Broward County, Florida has dismissed the criminal charges brought against a 19-year-old man for carrying a concealed firearm without a license, ruling that the state's law infringes on the Second Amendment rights of young adults.
On Friday, Judge Frank Ledee agreed with attorneys for 19-year-old Joel Walkes III that young adults have the right to both keep and bear arms, declaring that the state's prohibition "strips a class of legal adults of their ability to exercise the very right the Constitution guarantees.”
“The state has failed to identify Founding-era law that broadly prohibited the concealed carry of firearms by eighteen-to-twenty year olds,” Ledee wrote. “The state also failed to cite to any historical regulation imposing a burden or justification comparable to Florida’s concealed carry ban as applied to eighteen-to-twenty year olds.”
In the wake of Ledee's ruling, one Florida-based gun control activist slammed the decision.
“It is terrible. Of course it’s terrible,” said Patricia Oliver, whose son Joaquin was among the Parkland victims. “We are in danger. Florida is in danger.”
“What happened in all these seven and a half years from 2018 to today,” asked Oliver. “Now it’s less dangerous? Now we have less issues with gun violence? That is not true. We’ve been having more and more shootings every single day.”
Despite Oliver's claims, Florida appears to be much less dangerous than it was in 2018. This year jurisdictions like Miami-Dade and Orlando are reporting double-digit declines in homicides, and according to the FBI, last year violent crime in Florida declined by 8.7%, and even bigger drop than the national decline of 5.4%.
Instead of debunking Oliver's assertion, in an act of journalistic malpractice WPLG-TV let it go completely unchallenged.
Look, we can (and should) have all the sympathy in the world for Patricia Oliver, her husband Manuel, and every other Parkland parent whose child was murdered by a deranged former classmate in 2018. But that sympathy shouldn't blind us to the truth, and the truth is that violent crime has continued to go down in Florida even after the passage of permitless carry. That trend won't last forever, I'm sure, but there is virtually zero evidence that permitless carry, open carry, or even allowing adults under the age of 21 to exercise their Second Amendment rights is going to put the state "in danger."
Are young adults more likely than their older counterparts to commit violent crimes? In general, yes. Still, the vast majority of young adults will never commit a violent offense, and it makes no sense to use that as justification to bar every adult under the age of 21 from keeping and bearing arms.
Still, the judge's decision to drop charges against Walkes doesn't mean that every 18-to-21-year-old can now lawfully carry in Florida. If prosecutors appeal this case all the way to the state Supreme Court then this case could lead to changes statewide, but if and when that happens the U.S. Supreme Court may have already weighed in on the Second Amendment rights of young adults. SCOTUS has three cases it could take up this term, including a challenge to Florida's ban on gun sales to under-21s, and if the justices accept one or more of them a decision could come down next spring.
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