Florida's GOP State Attorney Bakkedahl Cites Anti-2A Everytown to Defend Infringements

Will Florida ever fix their anti-gun Republican problem?

August 21, 2025 By David Codrea, Gun Politics Field Editor

“BREAKING NEWS,” Luis Valdes, Gun Owners of America’s Florida State Director and Co-Chair of Fuerza 2A. alerted members at X.com. “Florida Republican State Attorney Thomas Bakkedahl cites Everytown for Gun Safety in defense of the Under-21 Carry Ban & Open Carry Ban.”

“@GunOwners sues FL & the FL GOP SAO cites extremely anti-gun org in their defense of unconstitutional gun control!” Valdes elaborated.

“The FL Republican State Attorney's Office … is stating to the court that Open Carry has no protection under the Second Amendment,” he further explained. “What? So, the Minute Men at Lexington & Concord concealed carried their five-foot long muskets?”

The case, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, is Gun Owners of America, et al. v. Sheriff Richard R. Del Toro. Plaintiffs, including GOA, the Gun Owners Foundation, and Palm Beach County resident Richard Hughes, are suing Sheriff Del Toro and Bakkedahl, “in his official capacity As the State Attorney for the 19th Judicial Circuit of Florida, and the State Attorney’s Office for the 19th Judicial Circuit of Florida,” arguing the open carry ban violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. (Where the “under-21 carry ban” Valdes referenced in his X.com post comes into this is one of the citizens referenced under “Parties” in the Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief is an 18-year-old Eagle Scout and GOA member prohibited by Florida law from both obtaining a Concealed Weapon License and from openly carrying.)

Defendants citing Everytown is explained in a footnote to a plaintiff reply that “The colonists who gathered on the town greens at Lexington and Concord were not strangers to open carry.” GOA points that out, noting, “Although Defendants present a variety of purported historical records, they – unlike Plaintiffs – have failed to provide original source documents for any of them. Rather, they simply copy and paste from an academic paper written by anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety…”

It's worse than that. Arguing for citizen disarmament edicts “enacted in the mid-to-late nineteenth century” (instead of relying on what the Founders understood when they ratified the Second Amendment in 1791), the mindset being defended in their joint response by Sheriff Del Toro and State Attorney Bakkedahl is unmistakably, pejoratively, and desperately hostile against armed citizens.

“No man amongst us carries it about with him, as one of his every day accoutrements--as a part of his dress--and never we trust will the day come when any deadly weapon will be worn or wielded in our peace loving and law-abiding State, as an appendage of manly equipment,” the defendants quoted from the North Carolina Supreme Court in the 1843 case of State v. Huntly.

“It is apparent to every good citizen and man of sense, that any gentleman would blush and feel deeply ashamed to be caught parading the streets on a public occasion, or, for the matter of that, on a private occasion, with a revolver swinging around his neck like a powder horn, or sticking vulgarly and threateningly out of his hip pocket, making him the picture of a pirate,” the defendants quoted again, this time from an 1879 South Carolina grand jury statement.

These offensive “justifications” being argued by Florida Republicans sound like the kind of polemics to be expected from rabid Moms Demand Action zealots and ranting Democrat demagogues. That they would be made in an administration where Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely touted as being “pro-gun” and where Florida State Attorney General James Uthmeier recently refused to defend the under-21 long gun ban enacted after the Parkland shootings, goes beyond cognitive dissonance. Especially after seeing the outrage generated by then-Governor Rick Scott and then-state AG Pam Bondi (now presenting herself as the Trump Administration’s Second Amendment watchdog) jumping on the gun control bandwagon in the aftermath.

Alienating the core constituency of gun owners is especially incongruous with the desire of Republicans to maintain dominance in Florida state politics, but recent statements by Florida Senate President Ben Albritton on his opposition to open carry and campus carry legislation reflect an arrogance on the part of those who feel their seats are safe.

“I trust my law enforcement officials,” Albritton, from a solidly Republican district whose term will extend to 2028, told reporters. “They oppose it ... and I stand with them today in opposition.”

"This issue is deeply personal for me and millions of gun owners throughout Florida. Despite Florida's pro-Second Amendment image, this open carry ban reveals a stark contradiction, placing it alongside restrictive states like New York and Illinois,” Valdes tells Firearms News. “We are determined to reclaim a right that was unjustly taken, and we will persist until every Floridian can carry openly, freely, and in full alignment with the Constitution."

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts onTwitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.