DeSantis Backs Uthmeier's Refusal to Defend Parkland-Era Gun Limits: 'Good Faith Position'

As the Supreme Court edges closer to a Florida war over rifle restrictions—a fight that state Attorney General James Uthmeier has preemptively refused to fight—Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday defended the chief legal officer's move as "credible."

At a Tampa press conference Tuesday morning, DeSantis also shut down a comparison between Uthmeier and two state attorneys the governor suspended for not enforcing Florida laws.

His comments follow a massive, years-long battle over Second Amendment rights in the Sunshine State—a point of tension exacerbated among Republicans after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland yielded a ban on long guns for Floridians under 21.

"You have an obligation to support and defend the Constitution," DeSantis said. "I was against it on constitutional grounds at the time...to completely supersede the rights of young adults and to take them out of the Second Amendment entirely."

The National Rifle Association last week petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenges to the law, marking a culmination of years of conservative pushback. And if the nation's highest court agrees to rule on it, Uthmeier, unlike his predecessor who also opposed the law, Ashley Moody, won't defend it.

This refusal sparked comparisons of Uthmeier to state attorneys Andrew Warren of Tampa and Monique Worrell of Orlando. Warren was suspended for pledging not to prosecute violators of the state's abortion ban, and Worrell for allegedly "neglecting" her duty to prosecute crime.

DeSantis claims that the difference is constitutionality, noting that "The state attorneys didn't want to enforce statutes the legislature had done" with arguments that he "didn't find" to be persuasive.

Uthmeier's, on the other hand, is a "good faith position," he claimed.

The sweeping Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act was approved by a majority Republican legislature and signed by then-Gov. Rick Scott in the immediate aftermath of the tragic high school shooting, which left 17 dead on Valentine's Day, 2018.

Part of the law raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, exempting servicemembers. 18-year-olds could still be gifted a rifle or shotgun under the law.

Since then, the Florida House has voted three times to overturn the age restriction, but the Senate has stymied the repeal at every turn. Uthmeier, soon after the House greenlit the lowered age for the third time in a row, announced that he would not defend the state law if it went to the Supreme Court.

"When I took the oath of office, I took the oath to uphold the Constitution. And my office's analysis is that this regulation violates the Second Amendment of our Constitution," Uthmeier had told The Floridian in April. "This is an area that's legally up in the air right now."