JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s Attorney General is asking for Florida\u2019s three-day wait period for firearms purchases to be declared unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
For 36 years, Floridians looking to purchase handguns have had to wait a minimum of three days before taking their gun home.<\/p>\n
It was a constitutional amendment approved by nearly 85 percent of voters in 1990, and in 2018 following the Parkland shooting, Florida lawmakers extended the wait period to also apply to long guns.<\/p>\n
But now, Florida\u2019s Attorney General is asking a federal judge to declare the wait period unconstitutional<\/a> as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit filed by the NRA challenging the wait period.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a scary proposition for gun safety advocates like Lucy Rowles with Florida Action Alliance, who told Action News Jax she wouldn\u2019t be here today if not for that wait period.<\/p>\n \u201cThis law saved my life,\u201d said Rowles.<\/p>\n In 2000, Rowles was considering taking her own life but found out she couldn\u2019t simply walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so, I left and you know it gave me breathing room,\u201d said Rowles. \u201dIt gave me that space in between that to sort my thoughts out.\u201d<\/p>\n Ziadeh Farhat with Green Acres Sporting Goods, said generally speaking, customers are understanding when they learn about the three-day waiting period.<\/p>\n \u201cNot contention, but a lot of people are confused because, you know most states don\u2019t have a waiting period,\u201d said Farhat.<\/p>\n But he does question whether the law has served its intended purpose, especially given neighboring states like Georgia don\u2019t require a wait period.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, I think if somebody was gonna do something like that, there\u2019s other means to get weapons or whatever and do that kind of thing,\u201d said Farhat.<\/p>\n Florida is among just 13 states with a mandatory wait period for gun purchases.<\/p>\n The others include California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.<\/p>\n But Rowles argues she\u2019s living proof of the importance of the wait period and hopes the judge on the case declines to go along with the Attorney General\u2019s request.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say it\u2019s a hardship, you know, to wait for three days. I don\u2019t think that any law-abiding, responsible gun owner would mind if it saved the lives of somebody like me, which it did,\u201d said Rowles.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s Attorney General is asking for Florida\u2019s three-day wait period for firearms purchases to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,6277,127196,28,127194,8853,1853,127197,969,116,118,117,971,55599,127198,634,127193,126970,109400,127195,12160],"class_list":["post-303164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-attorney_general","tag-farhat","tag-florida","tag-florida_action_alliance","tag-floridians","tag-georgia","tag-green_acres_sporting_goods","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_stan","tag-jake_toan","tag-local","tag-lucy_rowles","tag-nra","tag-roles","tag-rowles","tag-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}