Airport gun rules violate law
Regulations modifications did not go far enough to satisfy state law, judge says
Properly permitted gun owners have a right to bring their weapons to the airport and Broward County’s attempts to say otherwise violate state law, a circuit judge has ruled.
Florida Carry, a nonprofit group of gun owners formed to protect and defend the right to bear arms, sued the county in 2014 over local gun regulations that it said went beyond those set in state law.
Chief among the challenged ordinances were two that said weapons were not allowed on any property at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport or the North Perry Airport, which are both county owned.
Guns and weapons are not allowed past security checkpoints in the Fort Lauderdale terminals. The county’s prohibition extended to parking lots, roadways and other parts of the airports not subject to the federal restrictions. The bans also applied to taxi drivers having guns in their cars, even if they had the proper permits.
The county modified its regulations in an attempt to satisfy state law, but Circuit Judge Carlos Rodriguez said those changes did not go far enough.
Rodriguez said even testimony offered by Michael Nonnenmacher, Chief Operating Officer at the Fort Lauderdale airport and in charge of security there, showed it was understood that guns and other weapons were not allowed at the airport.
“His undisputed testimony confirms that, to the general public and the County’s own Chief Operating Officer, the respective ordinances reasonably appear to both the average person and a highly skilled and knowledgeable person to regulate firearms,” Rodriguez wrote in his ruling.
While county pleadings in the case indicated no one had been arrested as a result of the county restrictions, Florida Carry said the regulations could have been used to discourage people from legally
bringing their guns to the airport.
“People dropping off or picking up at the airport don’t have to feel like they’re going to be put in jail for a month,” said Sean Caranna, executive director for Florida Carry.
“Often, it’s just someone saying, ‘No, we have a county ordinance and you can’t carry that here’ and sending someone away,” Caranna said. “That’s still limiting someone’s right without authority to do so.”
County Attorney Drew Meyers said his office is reviewing the ruling to determine whether to appeal it.
Broward Commissioner Steve Geller said the county hadn’t been enforcing the gun regulations, so the ruling changes nothing.
“I find it to be a technical issue. The county may have to pay some fees on it, but there’ll be absolutely no change as a result of what they did in 2014,” Geller said. “It will have zero impact on actual enforcement in Broward County.”
Caranna said Florida Carry is interested in uniform gun laws across the state so gun owners know with consistency what their rights are.
The state in 1987 preempted local governments from making their own gun regulations, saying only the state had the power to adopt such laws. Because many cities and local governments were ignoring the state law, the state in 2011 set hefty penalties that could be brought against local government officials — including removal from office and $5,000 fines —who tried to pass local gun ordinances.
Many cities and counties went in and wiped local gun regulations from their books to avoid the threatened penalties.
The judge’s ruling calls for the county to pay reasonable attorney fees to Florida Carry related to the lawsuit. Neither side was able to provide an estimate Wednesday of what those expenses might be.