Photo of Brickell City Centre by Jill Bazeley via Flickr, collage by New Times
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Florida’s open-carry law has been active for less than a month, and gun-toting residents have turned the state into one massive Fortnite pregame lobby with cartoonish-looking, gun-equipped characters seen milling about on the streets, at grocery stores, malls, gas stations, and more.
The state has banned open carry since 1987, although laws surrounding concealed carry, permit carry, and constitutional carry have evolved since. The state began allowing open carry after an appeals court deemed Florida’s ban unconstitutional and overturned it on September 25, causing confusion for businesses and residents in the following weeks and seemingly leading to a proliferation in sightings of armed people in random places.
One Instagram user caught a motorcyclist on the streets with a Draco pistol strapped to his back and covering his NBA jersey underneath, clearly prepared for a rough night out at Buffalo Wild Wings.
“Cool way to have your gun snatched,” wrote one commenter.
Others pointed out that the rider had no visible license plate and was essentially begging for the police to pull him over.
“Wanting attention that bad? Very Miami,” wrote another who perhaps noticed the rear-mounted vanity video camera.
A Reddit user in South Florida last week caught this casually dressed commando sporting what appears to be a ZPAP pistol, another Eastern European-manufactured firearm. You may think a man in a tank top, watercolor camouflage basketball shorts, and Burberry slides looks ridiculous holding a gun, but he did at least color-coordinate before he took his weapon for a stroll at — checks notes — Southland Mall.
“I’m sorry, but if you feel you need a gun, you definitely need to have closed-toed shoes,” wrote one commenter who apparently remembers lab safety rules from high school.
“Pistol open-carrying with no shoulder strap, just holding that motherfucker is wild,” another commenter wrote.
“I’m for guns but this is dumb as fuck,” another wrote. “This is going to create lots of dead people and lots of stand-your-ground claims.”
Other Florida social media users have caught armed residents all over the place:
At a Wawa convenience store, one man apparently needs a shotgun to pair with his $6 meal deal.
A guy casually hops out of his car in front of Walmart, rifle slung over his shoulder (just another day in Florida), while someone else helpfully documents the moment like it’s a nature special.
In another video set to a chill, low-fi soundtrack, a man dons a t-shirt, backward cap, and slides as he bikes down the road toward a high-rise carrying a handy shotgun on his back.
Florida law still prohibits licensed and concealed carry of firearms in a wide range of sensitive locations, including police stations, courthouses, polling places, government meetings, athletic events, schools, and bars. Both the appeals court judge and state Attorney General James Uthmeier have clarified that these state and federal location-based restrictions still apply, even after the open carry ban was overturned.
While businesses and other private property owners still have the option to ban open carry under the law, some companies, like Florida-based Publix, made the decision to allow openly worn firearms in their grocery stores statewide.
