I need someone smarter than me to explain this to me. I currently live in Florida where open carry is prohibited (unless while camping, fishing, etc.).
The US Constitution clearly says I have the right to bear arms. The term "bear' means to have and show. Why can counties, cities, or states have the right to change the Constitution?
Matt
State law (and, depending on the individual State constitution, city and county laws) routinely trump the Constitution. We are not top-down. Power is supposed to emanate from the People through the States to the federal government. We are not a model whereby power devolves downward from the national government. We don't have a national government. At least we aren't supposed to.
The only authority of the federal government that trumps State authority are the specific powers delegated to the federal government by the States who created it and remain (or should remain) sovereign over it. There are 18 of those powers and they are explicitly listed in the Constitution.
You may well have a point that laws against OC in Florida violate the 2A. However, courts are just now coming around to the idea that the 2A is a restriction on all levels of government, not just the feds. The latest ruling, in Illinois, says that the State must allow some form of carry to be in compliance with the 2A. However, as yet, there is not federal court ruling that OC is the means of carry protected by the 2A. IMO, it is. And, IMO, the 2A applies to all levels of government, not because of incorporation or equal protection or any of the other lofty arguments, but because of the way the 2A is written. The 1A was clearly targeted at the federal government by the words, "Congress shall make no law..." The 2A uses the far more broad words, "shall not be infringed." IMO, this binds the federal government created by the Constitution,
and it binds the signatories to the Constitution, the States.
Some States do have State court rulings that recognize OC as
the right to bear arms, for example, Alabama.