District Judge Takes Down Mississippi’s Open Carry Ban

On June 17, 2020, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III issued an order that keeps the citizens from the city of Jackson, Mississippi from trying to prohibit the open carry of firearms as long as this form of carry is legal at the state level.

The Clarion Ledger reported that the judge’s order was a “consent decree” where Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and the Jackson City Council came to an agreement to not to try to limit open carry in the future.

According to a Breitbart News report, Lumumba made an announcement back in April which he banned open carry during the Wuhan virus pandemic emergency.

Lumumba stated:

The Open Carry law interferes with law enforcement’s ability to take illegal guns off of the streets. Prior to the Open Carry law, when Jackson police officers saw a gun in plain view, it gave them the probable cause to seize the weapon and determine whether it was an illegal weapon or not. The Open Carry law not only provides protection for individuals who are armed with illegal weapons; it creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the community. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that the Open Carry law has led to an increase in gun violence in our communities.

The NRA-ILA reported that Mississippi moved forward with a lawsuit against Lumumba’s order in the U.S. District Court of Mississippi’s Southern District.

Republican State Representative Dana Criswell is the plaintiff in the suit, who asserted that Lumumba’s ban constitutes a suspension of a constitutional right to carry a firearm openly in public for self-defense” and alleged that the issuance of the ban “exploited the present public health crisis caused by the exponential spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as a pretext to target persons exercising their constitutional right to carry a firearm openly in public for self-defense.”

Because of the federal court issuing the consent decree, the ban has been ended.

This is one of the few cases where the courts get it right. They exist for a reason and are some of the tools in our toolkit that can be used to safeguard liberty.