Last week was . . . interesting, to say the least, and not in the, "Oh god, oh god, we're all going to die" sense, either. No Chinese curses. Instead, we got an executive branch that steps up and stands with the rights of the people. One of those events was the DOJ saying that adults under 21 should be able to buy handguns.
To be clear, there's no federal prohibition on them owning a handgun. They just can't buy one themselves, which makes things weird.
Now the DOJ has said they won't enforce it, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is taking that as a cue.
That news cheered Floridians opposed to the state’s ban on individuals under 21 from buying a shotgun or rifle. That provision was part of the 2018 gun-safety law passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott in the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public High School in Parkland.
Critics of the law include Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, who has previously stated that he will work to overturn the age limitation if elected in November.
Another Florida Republican celebrating the opinion was Attorney General James Uthmeier.
“Glad DOJ has followed suit in the fight for Second Amendment rights of Americans who are old enough to sign up to defend our nation!” Uthmeier wrote Friday on X. “We took this position at the Supreme Court a year ago and look forward to working with the Florida Legislature to right this wrong!”
Just a few months after DeSantis appointed him last year, Uthmeier declared that in his opinion the Florida law was unconstitutional, and that he was directing his office not to defend it in a court challenge. The National Rifle Association had filed that lawsuit in 2018 after the Parkland law was implemented, but the high court denied its petition to hear the case on June 30.
Of course, Uthmeier has no real authority to unilaterally strike down Florida's ban on gun sales for adults under 21; otherwise he'd have killed it a while back. Instead, he can simply make it clear where he stands and not defend laws he believes to be unconstitutional.
Uthmeier, however, has been a fantastic attorney general when it comes to defending gun rights, because that's pretty much what he was already doing. This just gives him more leverage to defend his positions in Tallahassee. It's also a warning to the gun grabbers there that even if they did somehow manage to get more gun control passed, Uthmeier damn sure isn't going to defend it in court.
It's nice to see, especially compared to Pam Bondi, who I'm now convinced was the reason for the schizophrenic federal approach to guns in the first year plus of the Trump administration 2.0.
Version 2.1 is vehemently pro-gun, just like Uthmeier.
So I guess Bondi is good for one thing, and that's making way for actual pro-gun folks to step in and right the ship. More or less, anyway.
The truth is that Florida needs to get its act together on gun rights, because when you talk about a schizophrenic reaction to guns, the "Gunshine State" having prohibitions on adults under 21 buying any firearms and red flag laws is about as much of a problem as you're going to find.
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