GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Parkland community was distraught, gun vendors were unmoved and legal experts were skeptical when Florida’s attorney general said he wouldn’t enforce a law – recently upheld by a U.S. appeals court – banning the sales of rifles and shotguns to anyone under 21.
Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said he disagrees with a federal appeals court’s recent decision upholding the age restriction, passed in the wake of a 19-year-old gunman killing 17 people at a Parkland high school in 2018. In a memo, he said his duty to defend Florida’s statutes is trumped by his duty to uphold the Constitution.
“I must depart from this Office’s prior judgment,” he said. “In this instance, I cannot escape my judgment that the Florida statute is unconstitutional as applied to law-abiding adults under the age of 21.”
One year before the mass shooting, the gunman legally purchased an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle from a Coral Springs gun store, after having passed the required background check.
The law was a rare bipartisan effort to enact gun safety regulations after years of Republican opposition to Florida firearm restrictions. The National Rifle Association sued after former Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law in 2018.
Uthmeier was chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis when the governor fired the Democratic Hillsborough County prosecutor, Andrew Warren, in August 2022 over Warren’s pledge not to prosecute patients or providers of abortions or gender transition treatments. DeSantis said, “State attorneys have a duty to prosecute crimes as defined in Florida law, not to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on his personal agenda.”
At the time, Uthmeier wrote on social media, “Follow the law or find a new job.”
Warren, 48, said in a phone interview the governor’s inaction toward Uthmeier is hypocritical given DeSantis used the same logic used to remove him from office.
When presented with a hypothetical case where a 19-year-old tries to buy a shotgun at a gun shop, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said, “Our prosecutors will not be prosecuting those cases.”
The news upset Fred Guttenberg, who became a gun safety advocate after his daughter, Jaime, died in the Parkland massacre.
“That hypothetical example you used isn’t actually so hypothetical,” said Guttenberg, 59. “There was a thing called the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, and I visit my daughter in a cemetery because of it.”
The attorney general’s announcement doesn’t mean those aged 18 to 20 will be able to purchase rifles and shotguns from licensed vendors. Three firearm vendors – in Tampa, Brevard County and Gainesville – said they won’t begin selling firearms to those under 21 because of Uthmeier’s announcement. The sale of firearms will still violate existing state law, and state prosecutors could decide whether to prosecute violators.
“When you sell somebody a firearm,” said Timothy Scully, 59, who owns a shop just north of Melbourne Beach, “you really have to cross your t’s and dot your i’s.”
Stephen Schnably, 70, a constitutional law expert at the University of Miami and a registered Democratic voter, said the move was an insult to the Legislature and democracy.
“I don’t think a state attorney general should refuse to enforce or defend a statute as unconstitutional unless there’s a very serious reason for it,” he said. In doing so, the attorney general’s office is ignoring the will of the Florida Legislature, effectively rendering their law useless, he said.
“A simple flat policy of not ever prosecuting for violations of a statute means the statute has no effect,” he said. “And what is the Legislature supposed to do? Repass it? It’s already on the books.”
On March 14, a federal appellate court upheld Florida’s firearm age restriction in an 8-4 decision, noting those under 21 had been restricted from purchasing firearms at the time of the nation’s founding.
The attorney general’s argument would be more effective if a federal appeals court hadn’t just validated the Florida statute, said Mark Seidenfeld, 71, a professor at Florida State University. While Seidenfeld expressed a level of uncertainty given the unusual circumstances, he said the decision of the attorney general’s office not to enforce the statute is constitutionally questionable and flies in the face of the judicial branch’s authority.
“They are on shaky ground here,” Seidenfeld said.
Uthmeier, 37, was appointed as attorney general by Gov. DeSantis in February, filling a vacancy created by Ashley Moody’s Senate campaign. He worked as DeSantis’ chief of staff from 2021 to 2023 and worked as the campaign manager for DeSantis’ failed 2024 presidential run. Soon after taking office, he announced his intention to run for a full term as attorney general when the position opens next year. It will be his first attempt at statewide office.
Florida prosecutors have charged the age restriction statute 19 times since 2018. It wasn’t clear if the attorney general’s office was involved in prosecuting any of the cases.
The attorney general is not the main source of prosecution in Florida, said constitutional law expert Donald Jones, 73, at the University of Miami. Most prosecution is completed by state attorneys who are meant to make independent decisions about which cases to file.
Guttenberg said Florida’s chief legal officer is setting a harmful precedent for prosecutors in red counties to follow. Legal expert Jones also said Uthmeier’s recent tweets on the topic are improper, as they can be seen as advising local prosecutors which cases to file.
“You can’t politicize the institution of the attorney general’s office,” Jones said. “In theory, these officers do not operate on political ideology.”
Parkland’s former mayor at the time of the shooting, state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, D-Coconut Creek, said the attorney general’s actions are incredibly disheartening and worsen the Parkland community’s wounds. Hunschofsky said she worked to unify families after the shooting to bring them to Tallahassee to support the 2018 bill.
“It feels like a gut punch on a personal level,” she said. “It’s sad that we continue to relitigate something that has stood up in the courts.”
Federal law prohibits the sale of handguns to those under 21. This discussion of Florida law only impacts 18- to 20-year-old’s ability to purchase long guns, the classification containing rifles and shotguns.
The attorney general can consider financial and practical matters when determining which statutes to prioritize, experts said. The ability – known as prosecutorial discretion – is a powerful gray area allowing prosecutors to not enforce specific statutes, such as jaywalking, if they don’t believe it’s the best use of resources. Experts suggested those criteria aren’t met given Uthmeier’s discussion of constitutionality.
Republican Bill McCollum, 80, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2007 to 2011, said it’s within the scope of the attorney general’s abilities to pick which laws to defend. Democrat Bob Butterworth, 82, who served for 15 years as the attorney general beginning 1987, said his designation as chief legal officer grants him broad authority. McCollum said the attorney general is an elected position, and the public can remove him if it disagrees with the statutes he chooses to defend.
Guttenberg said “When the chief law enforcement officer is saying to the boss, ‘I am not going to enforce the law,’ why is his boss not removing him from office?”
The governor’s office did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls to discuss Uthmeier’s decision.
The House last week passed a bill sponsored by Reps. Michelle Salzman, R-Cantonment, and Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, that would lower the minimum age to purchase firearms in Florida back to 18. But halfway through the 60 day session, two similar Senate bills had not been scheduled for hearings.
Unlike Florida’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, whose office defended the statute in court, Uthmeier said his office will not represent Florida if the NRA appeals the federal court decision and a challenge is brought to the Supreme Court.
House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said Uthmeier’s actions showed a disregard for the role of Florida’s Legislature.
“I think it’s important for the people to have faith in our institutions,” she said. “That only works when we have mutual respect in our institutions.”
___
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at mcupelli@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
