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Florida Firearms & Stand Your Ground: Articles

An introduction to owning, operating, and carrying a firearm in the state of Florida as well as self-defense in Florida when using a firearm.

Law Review Articles - Firearms

 

"The State of Florida estimates that there are more than 400 sport shooting ranges in the state and that approximately one million shooting sport enthusiasts visit these ranges each year.  Shooting ranges in Florida have received increased attention recently as a result of certain high-profile cases that have raised the regulatory agencies' interest. This, in turn, has triggered the involvement of such influential national organizations as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and National Sports Shooting Foundation (NSSF), as well as public and private gun clubs in Florida. The upshot of this increased attention has been the passage of new laws and the development of new environmental stewardship practices that are applicable to Florida shooting ranges. This article will explain the background of these developments and discuss the legal and scientific issues associated with shooting ranges in Florida."

 

STATUTORY MARKSMANSHIP: ENACTING LAWS THAT REDUCE GUN-RELATED CRIME AND ACCIDENTS

"There are an estimated 283 million firearms in the United States of America, an average of approximately ninety-three firearms for every one hundred people.  Gun control legislation provokes fierce debate and frequent litigation. Well-funded lobby groups, for and against more stringent gun laws, flood the media with competing statistics and emotionally charged rhetoric to support their positions.  Gun legislation is a delicate issue and an overwhelming majority of Americans have a strong opinion about gunlegislation.  States and municipalities have a duty to protect the welfare of their citizens and should therefore enact gun control statutes and ordinances that effectively reduce the incidence of gun-related crime and accidents.
Throughout the states, there exists a wide array of firearm statutes and regulations. While some states have adopted a multitude of restrictive statutes, other states have very few or very permissive statutes.  This Article argues that states should reevaluate their respective gun laws in light of the statistics that show the types of laws that effectively reduce gun crime and accidents versus those that do not. The legislature should only maintain or enact laws that truly reduce gun crime and accidents.  The laws that have proven to either increase or have no effect on gun violence and accidents should be repealed and replaced with effective laws. This article is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of firearm laws, but rather a review of the laws that have proven exceptionally effective or exceptionally ineffective.
Part II discusses two recent United States Supreme Court holdings. In the first case, the Court found laws banning handgunownership unconstitutional, and in the second case, the Court incorporated the Second Amendment against the several states. Part III presents the competing interests created by firearms and the resulting need for new gun laws in some jurisdictions. Part IV analyzes the effectiveness of two types of gun laws: those laws that have reduced gun accidents and crime and those that have either increased or had no effect on gun accidents and crime. Part V of this article concludes that a model firearm code should be drafted to encourage neighboring states to cooperate in reducing gun crime and accidents."
 
GUN LAWS IN EARLY AMERICA: THE REGULATION OF FIREARMS OWNERSHIP, 1607-1794

"Discussion of early American gun laws begins with consideration of the English legal heritage. In the last few years, adherents of the self-described “standard model” of the meaning of the Second Amendment have constructed a paradigm of an uninterrupted tradition of legally sanctioned individual gun ownership in America. Such a construction starts with the idea that the British brought an acceptance of the universal ownership of firearms with them to the Americas.  That cultural norm gave form to the meaning of the Second Amendment, which institutionalized an individual right to bear arms for purposes of personal and communal defense and as a security against a tyrannical government. This history matters greatly to these scholars in establishing an original intent in the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to own guns."
 
“THE PEOPLE” OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT: CITIZENSHIP AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

"The Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, asserts that the Constitution's right to bear arms is an individual right to armed self-defense held by law-abiding “citizens.” This Article examines the implications of this description, concluding that the Second Amendment cannot concurrently be a right of armed self-defense and restricted to citizens. The Article proceeds in three parts. First, it analyzes the term “the people” as it has been interpreted in recent Court cases. The Article concludes that constitutional text and Supreme Court jurisprudence provide no sustainable basis to believe the Second Amendment is limited to citizens. Second, the Article situates Heller within a historical context of gun regulation motivated by racial animus and xenophobia, manifested by contractions of citizenship to exclude--and gun laws intended to disarm--racial minorities and noncitizens. Third, the Article attempts to revive a coherent theory justifying the limitation of gun rights to citizens but ultimately concludes that armed self-defense is conceptually unrelated to historically political rights such as voting and jury service. Thus, Heller's holding regarding who is entitled to armed self-defense is logically unsound and doctrinally troubling."
 
THE GREAT GUN CONTROL WAR OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY--AND ITS LESSONS FOR GUN LAWS TODAY

"A movement to ban handguns began in the 1920s in the Northeast, led by the conservative business establishment. In response, the National Rifle Association (NRA) began to get involved in politics and was able to defeat handgun prohibition. Gun control and gunrights became the subjects of intense political, social, and cultural battles for much of the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
Often, the battles were a clash of absolutes: One side contended that there was absolutely no right to arms, that defensive gunownership must be prohibited, and that gun ownership for sporting purposes could be, at most, allowed as a very limited privilege. The other side asserted that the right to arms was absolute, and that any gun control laws infringed that right.
By the time that Heller and McDonald came to the Supreme Court, the battles had mostly been resolved. The Supreme Court did not break new ground, but instead reinforced what had become the American consensus: the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, especially for self-defense, is a fundamental individual right. That right, however, is not absolute. There are some guncontrol laws that do not violate the right, particularly laws which aim to keep guns out of the hands of people who have proven themselves to be dangerous.
In the post-Heller world, as in the post-Brown v. Board of Education world, a key role of the courts will be to enforce federal constitutional rights against some local or state jurisdictions whose extreme laws make them outliers from the national consensus."

Law Reviews - Self Defense & Firearms

ARMED AND LITIGIOUS: THE FLORIDA GUNS AT WORK LAW AND CONSTITUTIONAL SCRUTINY

"This Note addresses the Northern District of Florida's recent decision evaluating the constitutionality of Florida's controversial “guns at work” law.1 In Florida Retail Federation, Inc. v. Attorney General,2 the court held that the provisions of the statute requiring businesses to allow customers to keep firearms in their cars were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, but upheld the constitutionality of the statute as applied to employees.3 Florida Retail is notable for three reasons. First, the case involves a unique intersection of property rights, legislative prerogatives, and statutory interpretation. Second, the court decided the case on rational basis equal protection grounds, which is noteworthy on its own, but particularly interesting because the court appears to have raised the equal protection argument sua sponte. Finally, there is some tension between the court's determination that the statute is not ambiguous and its holding that the customer rights provision violated the Equal Protection Clause. This Note provides a short summary of the statute before addressing Chief Judge Hinkle's opinions in the case."
 
THE RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNERSHIP ORDINANCE AND NOVEL TEXTUAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT

"Although gun ownership is a fundamental right under the Second Amendment of the Constitution,1 it is subject to reasonable restrictions.2 The City of Chicago's most recent attempt to define the contours of those restrictions raises serious textual questions about the meaning of the Second Amendment. This Comment will evaluate various provisions of Chicago's new firearm ordinance and conclude (1) that it is likely unconstitutional and (2) that future gun-control regulations will only be upheld if they respect the full understanding of the contours of the Second Amendment adopted in Heller, rather than merely satisfying its narrow holding."
 
FLORIDA'S CONTROVERSIAL GUN POLICY: LIBERALLY PERMITTING CITIZENS TO ARM THEMSELVES AND BROADLY RECOGNIZING THE RIGHT TO ACT IN SELF-DEFENSE

"The transformation of Florida's self-defense law is best explained through illustration. Imagine a woman walking to her car at midnight. She keeps a gun in her purse. She notices a man quickly approaching; he has a knife and charges toward her. Should the woman attempt to outrun the man or use defensive force and fire at her attacker? Consider a similar scenario where an elderly man who lives alone refuses to leave his home of fifty years, despite the deterioration of his neighborhood. He awakes in the middle of the night to see the shapes of two men approaching. He instinctively reaches for his gun and shoots. In these situations, both individuals would likely assert self-defense. Under Florida common law, the woman would have had a legal duty to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense.1 The man would have had to prove that he had a reasonable fear of imminent death or grievous bodily injury.2 However, the jury would have had the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, and would have known the information, which the old man did not, that the two teenage intruders were *232 unarmed.3 Lastly, even if the individuals were found not guilty, the victim's family could sue them.4"
 
 
"Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Law has been controversial since Governor Jeb Bush signed it into law on April 26, 2005.  The Protection of Persons/Use of Force Bill (the Judiciary Committee's Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 436) expanded an individual's legal right to use force in self-defense, including deadly force, without fear of criminal or civil consequences.   In doing so, the law abrogated "the common law duty to retreat when attacked before using force, including deadly force in self-defense or defense of others."  Although it should have  [396]  troubled the legislature that the individuals charged with enforcing the law - prosecutors and law enforcement - opposed the law, the dissent by these groups did not dissuade the Florida Legislature. The law passed with unanimous approval in the Florida Senate and passed overwhelmingly in the Florida House of Representatives."
 

A FRESH CUT IN AN OLD WOUND-A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TRAYVON MARTIN KILLING: THE PUBLIC OUTCRY, THE PROSECUTORS' DISCRETION, AND THE STAND YOUR GROUND LAW

23 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 271

"This is a critical analysis of the controversial killing of Trayvon Martin, a young, Black teen from South Florida. The details of the killing remain contentious, laden with competing theories of murder  [272]  and self-defense.  For some, this is a case about race.  For some, this is a case about neighborhood watch and protecting oneself or, instead, illegal vigilante justice.  For others, it may be a case about prosecutorial discretion and law enforcement accountability. Still, others find this to be a case about Florida's Stand YourGround Law. Fundamentally, the Martin killing is a hybrid case about both race and law, and the  [273]  government's response to each. It is about how one killing can trigger provocative issues so that public outcry and media coverage combine to ignite intense passion across the country and throughout the world. Due to the latent, but smoldering embers surrounding race, crime, and (in)justice, the community was essentially primed to react. In fact, a strong reaction swelled. Based on this confluence of circumstances, the Martin killing sparked a flame in the American discourse that goes beyond any simple explanation as to why a bullet was shot into this young man's chest. The Martin killing, to some degree, reinvigorated a movement toward racial equality in the criminal justice system, while simultaneously strengthening racial animosity and negative stereotypes, both White and Black."

UP IN ARMS OVER FLORIDA'S NEW "STAND YOURGROUND" LAW

30 Nova L. Rev. 155

"The suburban accountant heard scratching noises at his front door.  In fear, he grabbed his .40-caliber handgun, opened the door, and shot the sixteen-year-old in the back.  He told police he thought the teenager was armed.  In actuality, the teenager and his friend were trying to tie fishing  [156]  line to door knockers as a prank.  The accountant pled guilty to a charge of manslaughter, "was sentenced to spend [fifty-two] weekends in the Palm Beach County Jail and ten years of probation."  He "said he thinks about the [teenager's] death every day and regrets his action."  This occurred in October of 2003. 7 Had it occurred after October 1, 2005, the case would not have been prosecuted.  The reason: a new law that purports to codify Florida's castle doctrine, but which critics say enshrines "shoot first, ask questions later" into Florida law instead.

On October 1, 2005, people in Florida gained the right to stand their ground."

 

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