LAKEWOOD, Colo. (August 25, 2025) — In a new legal offensive, Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep & Bear Arms and the National Rifle Association has filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s mandatory three day waiting period for firearm purchases. What sets this case, (Dunn v. Glass) apart from previous cases filed in Colorado (Garcia v. Polis) and New Mexico (Ortega v. Grisham), is the fact that this lawsuit attacks the Florida waiting period from two legal fronts.
First, the lawsuit targets a Florida Constitutional amendment passed in 1990, which imposes a mandatory three-day waiting period for handgun purchases—even for individuals who pass background checks. This provision makes firearm delays a permanent part of the state’s governing document.
Second, the lawsuit challenges a 2018 Florida statute, which expanded the waiting period to include all firearms, not just handguns. The law imposes sweeping delays that leave Floridians — including plaintiffs like Josiah Burnham, Jeremy Hesson, and Mitchell Dunn— defenseless when they may need protection most.
MSLF’s Center to Keep & Bear Arms argues that both of these provisions directly contradict the Second Amendment and infringes on the right to immediate self-defense.
“The firearm waiting period provisions in Florida have nothing to do with the promotion of public safety, and everything to do with throwing up pointless roadblocks to the ability of law-abiding citizens to acquire firearms,” Center to Keep & Bear Arms Director Michael McCoy says, “The Second Amendment protects the private right of individuals to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense; but Florida’s waiting period provisions arbitrarily delays this right. Three days is both an unnecessary and dangerous delay.”
This case has the potential to set a powerful legal precedent when it comes to waiting period laws across the country. Peaceable Americans have the right to protect themselves and their loved ones as immediately as the threats they face. A right that is delayed is a right being denied.
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Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is a nonprofit, public-interest legal firm established in 1977. MSLF is dedicated to individual liberty, limited and ethical government, and the benefits of the free enterprise system. MSLF defends its clients through pro bono litigation and seeks victory for its clients at the highest level possible to establish binding legal precedents to benefit millions of Americans. Through its litigation and public discourse, MSLF educates the American public on the threat unrestrained government presents to our liberties. Learn more at mslegal.org