Gun Waiting Periods Are Dumb and Unconstitutional. Florida Just Agreed.

Let's start with a question. Why does the government think you need three days to decide whether you really want to exercise a constitutional right?

That's the entire logic behind a gun waiting period. You pass your background check, the system clears you in minutes, and the state still makes you wait. Not for the check. For a mood.

It's called a cooling-off period, and it's exactly as condescending as it sounds.

Run the logic on any other right

The whole idea falls apart the second you apply it anywhere else.

Imagine being told you can't post your opinion online for three days, in case you say something you'll regret. Or that you have to wait three days before you can attend church, file a petition, or speak to a reporter. We'd call that absurd, because it is.

A right delayed is a right denied. The Second Amendment doesn't come with a waiting room.

Why waiting periods don't survive Bruen

This isn't just a values argument. It's a legal one, and the law keeps moving in our direction.

In 2022, the Supreme Court decided NYSRPA v. Bruen and set the test for gun laws. If the plain text of the Second Amendment covers your conduct, the government has to prove its restriction matches the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. No tradition, no law.

Buying a gun is part of keeping and bearing one. You can't exercise a right to a firearm you aren't allowed to take home. So a forced delay burdens the right, which throws the burden back on the government to find a founding-era law that looks like it.

It can't. The first waiting period in America didn't appear until 1923, and even that was a one-day delay in California meant to give slow background checks time to finish. A delay that exists purely to make you wait, with no connection to a check, has no historical ancestor at all. Under Bruen, that's the ballgame.

Florida just conceded the point

Which brings us to the latest crack in the wall.

On June 5, 2026, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced his office is settling a federal lawsuit and conceding that the state's three-day waiting period is unconstitutional. The case, Dunn v. Glass, was brought by the NRA and several plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in August 2025.

Florida's version was the usual setup. Once a dealer started your background check, you waited three days to take possession even if you cleared instantly, with concealed carry permit holders and handgun trade-ins as the main exceptions. The law got worse in 2018, when lawmakers expanded it from handguns to all firearms three weeks after the Parkland shooting.

Instead of defending it, the state's top lawyer sided with the people suing to kill it. Uthmeier said on X that government exists to protect constitutional rights, and that's why he was settling. You don't hear that from an attorney general every day.

What this win is, and what it isn't

Here's where I want to be precise, because this part is easy to oversell.

A settlement is not a court ruling. When a state concedes a case, it binds that state and nothing more. It does not create precedent that any other state has to follow, and it doesn't strike down a single waiting period law anywhere outside Florida. A gun owner in California or New Jersey wakes up tomorrow under the exact same rules they went to bed with.

So no, this doesn't change your state's law by itself. What it does is quieter, and still worth a lot.

Why it still matters everywhere

First, it frees actual Floridians from a pointless delay. That matters most for the person facing a stalker or a credible threat who can't afford to wait three days for the means to defend themselves.

Second, it's a model. When a state attorney general looks at a waiting period and concludes it can't survive Bruen, that's a roadmap other litigants and officials can copy.

Third, it adds momentum to a fight that's already producing real precedent elsewhere. The Tenth Circuit struck down New Mexico's seven-day waiting period. A federal court in Maine blocked that state's law, and it's headed to the First Circuit. Those are rulings, not concessions, and they carry actual legal weight. Florida is one more sign the ground is shifting.

What it means for you

The takeaway depends on where you live.

• If you're in Florida, same-day purchases are back on the table for buyers who clear a background check. Watch how local prosecutors and dealers handle the rollout before you count on walking out same-day.
• If your state still has a waiting period, nothing changed today. But the legal foundation under those laws is cracking, and the argument that beats them is the same one waiting to be used in your state.
• Either way, know the principle. A waiting period isn't a safety measure once a background check clears in seconds. It's a delay for its own sake, and that's exactly the kind of law that doesn't hold up under scrutiny anymore.

One state at a time isn't fast. But it's how this gets done, and the list of states clinging to cooling-off periods is getting shorter, not longer.