Florida has open carry. Finally.
Unfortunately, there are some issues with how the ruling went down. You see, it also basically ended gun-free zones throughout the entire state. I don't see this as a bad thing, but a lot of people do.
And, unsurprisingly, a bill has been introduced to try and address this.
Rep. Christine Hunchofsky, D-Parkland, said her bill (HB 63) is intended to close a “perceived loophole” created by the 1st District Court of Appeal’s ruling in a case known as McDaniels v. State of Florida.
A three-judge panel of the Tallahassee-based court found that the state’s open-carry ban was incompatible with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The Sept. 10 ruling overturned a 1987 law that made it a misdemeanor to visibly display guns.
Part of the fallout from the ruling involves a longstanding law allowing concealed-weapons licenses. That law included prohibitions on carrying handguns into certain places but does not address long guns, such as rifles.
In an interview with The News Service of Florida, Hunchofsky said she filed the bill for the 2026 legislative session to clear up uncertainty about the ruling.
“Right now, everybody’s scrambling. We have differing opinions and we just want to bring some clarity to this, and especially given the time we’re in, we need to have this clarity,” said Hunchofsky, who is slated to take over as House minority leader after the 2026 elections.
Without a legislative fix, the ruling might allow people to openly carry rifles, shotguns and other long guns into places that are off-limits to handguns, including courthouses, legislative meetings, school board meetings, jails, police stations and bars. Hunchofsky said that lawmakers never intended to allow guns to be brought into such spaces.
The issue here is that I'm just not that trusting that a Democrat from Parkland is going to limit their efforts to just those places, which are relatively non-controversial. Sure, I see no reason why non-drinkers at a bar can't have a firearm on their person, for example, but I get that a lot of people aren't fond of firearms anywhere that there's that much alcohol.
If it's limited to just those places, I suspect the legislature will pass such a bill fairly easily. Sure, there's a Republican supermajority in there, but a lot of those Republicans are extremely squishy on gun rights, so I don't think they'll balk at something like this.
Others will see it as acceptable so long as it's limited to the places outlined above.
I just don't see why anyone should trust that it'll just be those, though.
This is a representative from Parkland. I see no reason why she wouldn't try to score some points by expanding the off-limits places if at all possible. It's not like people in her district aren't a touch sensitive about guns. There's no reason to trust her on this at all.
As it stands, if the gun-free zones are, in fact, dead because of the open carry ruling, then Florida has a golden opportunity to be the pro-gun state lawmakers there like to believe they already are. Limit guns in courtrooms and jails. That should be it, at most. I can see security reasons for those, after all, so sure, let's roll with that.
Everywhere else, let them be free. Let people go about their days without having to lock their guns in their cars when they go and take care of personal business in the courthouse or when they stop by the police station to get an accident report.
We'll be following this to see just how deep things go with this bill and how everything shakes out ultimately.
But I'm not holding my breath on it being something to just shrug off.
