Jane MusgraveGun rights group sues 14 local police agencies and PBSO alleging mistakes in seizing guns.
A statewide gun rights group is suing 15 Palm Beach County police agencies, including the sheriff’s office, claiming they are violating a state law that allows them to go to court to seize firearms from people who they claim pose a threat to themselves or others.
The lawsuits, filed in early October, are the latest salvo by 15-year-old Florida Carry, which has successfully sued cities and counties across the state, claiming they are trampling on people’s Second Amendment rights.
In their latest round of litigation, the group is taking aim at the state’s so-called red flag law. The measure was passed in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that left 20 students and six adults dead.
The law allows police to file risk protection petitions, asking a judge to let them seize guns from people for up to a year if they have proof they may use the weapons to harm themselves or others.
In the lawsuits, the group claims local police agencies are skirting key requirements of the law, giving people little chance to defend themselves against one-sided allegations that are rarely questioned by judges.
In one of the lawsuits, Florida Carry is suing 13 municipal police departments, including the county’s biggest cities, West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Palm Beach Gardens.
Also sued are Boynton Beach, Highland Beach, Juno Beach, Lantana, North Palm Beach, Palm Springs, Riviera Beach, Jupiter, Palm Beach and Florida Atlantic University.
Florida Carry filed a separate lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, seeking class-action status and damages of up to $100,000 for the nearly 1,400 people who have been temporarily stripped of their guns since 2022. By law, the group can’t seek damages going back beyond four years.
They are asking that Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and the chiefs of some of the municipal agencies be ordered to pay $5,000 fines for “willfully” violating the measure.
Neither Florida Carry attorneys nor its executive director, Sean Caranna, returned phone calls for comment. Likewise, cities contacted said they either don’t comment on pending litigation or didn’t respond.
‘Lifelong consequences’
Ryan Gartner, who is the plaintiff in the suit against Bradshaw, said he was spurred to act after having his guns seized in October 2022 after a dispute with his brother at a Lake Worth Beach-area home they shared with their parents.
While a deputy said he pointed a gun at his brother during an argument over a vacuum cleaner, the 38-year-old said the facts were twisted. Once the deputy’s claims were taken before a judge, Gartner said there was no way to unravel them or set the record straight.
“I was unfairly treated by PBSO, the judge … it was the totality of the circumstances,” said Gartner, who had never been arrested or ordered to seek mental health treatment. He was cleared by psychologists who examined him at JFK North Hospital after his arrest on a charge of aggravated assault in connection with the dispute. Prosecutors dropped the charge.
After his journey through the court system, Gartner said he met others who went through similar ordeals. Some didn’t even own guns. Others simply ignored the orders and obtained other weapons after their guns were seized. The law, he said, isn’t working.
But, he said, it can have dire consequences. The risk protection petitions, classified as “mental health” cases on the clerk of courts website, are publicly available to nosy neighbors or those doing background checks on applications for jobs, leases or professional licenses.
“It has lifelong consequences,” Gartner said. “It destroys your life. It doesn’t save it.”
Required form, sworn statements missing
Like most gun rights groups, Florida Carry has railed against the measure since the Parkland massacre prompted the historically gun-friendly Republican-controlled Legislature in 2018 to approve it along with a series of other gun control measures.
While the law was upheld as constitutional in 2019, Florida Carry describes it as “unnecessary and unconstitutional” on its website.
Still, it said, there were safeguards built into the law. In the lawsuits, it said the safeguards are being ignored.
What happened to Gartner is typical, they wrote in the lawsuit. The deputy sought a temporary risk protection order that allowed him to immediately seize Gartner’s pistol and a rifle from his parents’ house. The hearing, like most for temporary orders, was conducted without Gartner present to give his side of the story.
The deputy also used a form that was created by the sheriff’s office. By law, police agencies are required to use a form crafted by the Office of the State Courts Administrator, the group says in its lawsuits.
Using the required form is important. “(It assures) that law enforcement agencies don’t skip important steps that protect the rights of Florida’s citizens,” it says on its website. “This also ensures that a judge can easily see steps that were improperly glossed over.”
Further, there were no sworn statements from Gartner’s brother or parents included in the package presented to Circuit Judge Kirk Volker, who granted the temporary order.
The state-crafted form requires officers to include a statement from “someone with personal knowledge” that the person is likely to hurt himself or someone else in the near future, Florida Carry said on its website.
Instead, they said, in Gartner’s case and most others, deputies simply submit a report, summarizing what witnesses told them. That doesn’t comply with the law.
Few can afford an attorney
Such reports can be challenged when a final hearing is held. However, West Palm Beach attorney Roger P. Foley said many people can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars to hire an attorney to represent them.
With no one challenging a law enforcement officer’s claims, judges often simply make the temporary order final.
Unlike most people, Gartner was represented by an attorney. But, according to the final order Volker signed, Gartner agreed to relinquish his guns for 10 months even though he didn’t admit he had done anything wrong.
Two months later, Gartner’s attorney tried to get his guns back, claiming Gartner grabbed his pistol because he thought intruders were in his parents’ house.
Volker didn’t believe him. He said Gartner’s new claims were contradicted by his mother, who testified at an earlier hearing that Gartner had pointed a gun at his brother in an argument over a vacuum cleaner.
“The court finds that Gartner’s claim that he always carries his firearm around with him in every room of his house, including the bathroom, due to there being many kinds of violent crimes being committed in his neighborhood, including crimes such as carjacking and homicide, was not credible,” Volker wrote.
Doesn’t help the mentally ill
Foley said the law needs to be revisited.
Too often, people become embroiled in it simply because they are having a bad day. They are upset. They say they are going to kill themselves. Someone reports it to police. Or, they are angry and threaten to kill someone even though they have no intention of doing so, he said.
“I understand if someone has a mental illness, you don’t want them to have a weapon,” Foley said. But, he said, too often others are swept up in the process. Because it is in the public record, it haunts them for decades.
Further, typically there is no help offered to those who have serious mental health problems. Their guns are seized, but a year later, they are returned. The underlying problems aren’t addressed, he said.
Foley said he would like to see a committee of judges, lawyers, mental health experts and others assembled to figure out ways to review the law and its unintended consequences.
“There’s definitely improvements that could be made,” Foley said. “Everyone should be working together to make it better.”
Florida seizes guns more than 21 states
Research into the impact of the law showed that almost all — more than 98% — of temporary requests for removal of firearms were granted by judges in Florida from 2018 to 2020. Overall, 94.2% of the 4,695 petitions one research team reviewed were granted, according to the study published in 2025.
That compared to just 60% of temporary requests being granted in Colorado, where attorneys are appointed to represent people who face risk protection orders. Overall, 85.2% of the petitions are granted in Colorado. Researchers cautioned that at the time of the study that law was in its infancy and few petitions had been sought.
With roughly 3,500 petitions filed each year, Florida uses the red flag law more than the 21 other states that have enacted the measure although New York and Connecticut have higher per capita rates.
However, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in June found that the law is used unevenly in Florida.
The review of 8,811 petitions filed from March 2018 to December 2021 found that some of the state’s most populous counties, including Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, file fewer petitions than much smaller counties, such as Polk County in Central Florida.
Researchers disagree about the impact of the measure. Some have found that it appears to have reduced the number of gun-related suicides and protected victims of domestic violence. Others say that it hasn’t reduced gun-related homicides or hospitalizations, although they caution that additional research is needed.
Still, proponents of red flag laws insist that they prevent suicides, homicides and mass shootings. “Removing firearms quickly during crisis can be the difference between life and death,” says Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the nation’s leading gun control groups.
Gartner insisted that the law is fatally flawed and unnecessary.
“We’re going to keep suing over and over again,” he said. “That’s how Florida works, unfortunately.”
