District Judge Strikes Down Mississippi Mayor’s Open Carry Ban

U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III issued an order that prevents the city of Jackson, Mississippi, from attempting to ban the open carry of firearms so long as such carry is legal at the state level.

The Clarion Ledger reports the judge’s order was a “consent decree” in which Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D) and the Jackson City Council agreed not to try to restrict open carry in the future.

Breitbart News reported Lumumba’s April announcement in which he banned open carry “during the [coronavirus] civil emergency.”

Lumumba said:

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 reports the Mississippi Justice Institute filed a lawsuit against Lumumba’s order in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi.

The Plaintiff in the suit, State Rep. Dana Criswell (R-Mount Olive), alleged Lumumba’s ban actually represented the suspension of a “constitutional right to carry a firearm openly in public for self-defense” and claimed 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.”

The court’s consent decree ends the ban.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.