State AG Ashley Moody defends Florida's felon gun ban
TALLAHASSEE - Attorney General Ashley Moody's office has urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject a challenge to a state law barring possession of guns by convicted felons.
In a 13-page brief, lawyers in Moody's office wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court has "been clear that longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons do not infringe the Second Amendment."
An attorney for convicted felon William Edenfield in August asked the Florida Supreme Court to take up a constitutional challenge to the law. The request came after a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in May rejected Edenfield's arguments, which focused, in part, on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court required evaluating gun restrictions by whether they are consistent with the nation's "historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Edenfield's attorney wrote that the 1st District Court of Appeal interpreted the Bruen decision to "read into the Second Amendment a limitation to only 'law-abiding, responsible citizens.' Such a qualification is found nowhere in the Second Amendment's controlling text. The district court cited almost no historical evidence in support of this limitation."
But Moody's office said the Florida Supreme Court should not take up Edenfield's case.
"Petitioner (Edenfield) cites no case in which a court has held that a felon-dispossession law is facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment," the state's lawyers wrote. "On the contrary, the courts overwhelmingly have upheld the validity of felon-dispossession laws even after Bruen."