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Attorney General Ashley Moodyโ€™s office Monday urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject a challenge to a state law barring possession of guns by convicted felons.

In a 13-page brief, lawyers in Moodyโ€™s office wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court has โ€œbeen clear that longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons do not infringe the Second Amendment.โ€

An attorney for convicted felon William Edenfield in August asked the Florida Supreme Court to take up a constitutional challenge to the law.

The request came after a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in May rejected Edenfieldโ€™s arguments, which focused, in part, on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court required evaluating gun restrictions by whether they are consistent with the nationโ€™s โ€œhistorical tradition of firearm regulation.โ€

Edenfieldโ€™s attorney wrote that the 1st District Court of Appeal interpreted the Bruen decision to โ€œread into the Second Amendment a limitation to only โ€˜law-abiding, responsible citizens.โ€™

Such a qualification is found nowhere in the Second Amendmentโ€™s controlling text. The district court cited almost no historical evidence in support of this limitation.โ€

But Moodyโ€™s office Monday said the Florida Supreme Court should not take up Edenfieldโ€™s case.

โ€œPetitioner (Edenfield) cites no case in which a court has held that a felon-dispossession law is facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment,โ€ the stateโ€™s lawyers wrote. โ€œOn the contrary, the courts overwhelmingly have upheld the validity of felon-dispossession laws even after Bruen.โ€

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