The Florida House on Friday passed a measure that would lower the minimum age from 21 to 18 to buy rifles and other “long” guns, voting to scrap a high-profile change passed after a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Lawmakers included the gun restriction in a sweeping 2018 school-safety package after Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 students and faculty members and injure 17 others.
During debate on the plan to lower the age on Friday, House bill sponsor Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, said the measure “corrects the wrong we did in 2018.” Payne argued that the bill (HB 1543) would leave intact other provisions of the 2018 law that addressed mental health and school safety.
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“You see the gun as the problem,” Payne said. “I see the interventions and the policies as the answer.” But Democrats fiercely opposed lifting the age restriction, attributing it to helping the state avoid a repeat of the mass shooting in Broward County.
State Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, a Democrat who was the mayor of Parkland at the time of the shooting, pleaded with her colleagues to keep the age restriction in place. She called the 2018 law a national “gold standard” for school safety. “This law has stood the test of time because we have not had another school shooting in the state of Florida, and I hope to God we never do so that children will no longer hide, hit the ground, when a balloon pops. … We are going down the wrong path here,” she said.
With a week remaining in the 2023 legislative session, the measure faces an uncertain future. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, has expressed opposition to the proposal.
“I’ll see it when it comes over,” Passidomo told reporters prior to the House’s 69-36 vote Friday.
Supporters of the bill have argued, in part, that the prohibition on people under 21 buying long guns violates the constitutional rights of young adults.
The Republican-controlled Legislature’s 2018 decision was highly unusual in a state that had expanded gun rights over decades.
The National Rifle Association immediately filed a challenge in federal court, arguing that the law violated the Second Amendment.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in 2021 upheld the constitutionality of the law. Walker said he was following legal precedent, though he also described the case as falling “squarely in the middle of a constitutional no man’s land.”
The NRA appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court in March upheld the law. The NRA has asked the full court to reconsider the ruling.
Concealed Carry In Florida
On April 3, 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 543 the ‘Constitutional Carry’ bill, allowing Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a government-issued permit.
The bill, HB 543, goes into effect on July 1, 2023, making Florida the 26th state to enact Constitutional Carry legislation.
“Constitutional Carry is in the books,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a measure (HB 543) that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without having to meet requirements such as firearms training and background screening.
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Sen. Jay Collins, a Tampa Republican who sponsored the measure, echoed many supporters in saying that it is designed to prevent Floridians from having to get a “permission slip” to carry guns.
“What this bill does is remove the need for that government permit, that permission slip, to carry a concealed weapon,” Collins said just before the Republican-dominated Senate signed off on the bill.
But Democrats have slammed the bill as having the potential to make Floridians less safe. Sen. Victor Torres, D-Orlando, drew on his experience as a former police officer in pushing against the removal of the training requirements.
“As a former law-enforcement (officer) for 20 years in New York City, I had the privilege of carrying a weapon on me, a gun,” Torres said. “But I was trained, over and over and over and over and over. Why? The safety of the public.”
The gun law measure also cleared the Senate just days after a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee in which three children and three adults were killed. Some Democrats on Thursday criticized the measure as running counter to “progress” that lawmakers made on gun policies after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
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“Why we are going in the opposite direction from the progress we made after the tragedy of Parkland is beyond me,” Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said.
But several Republican senators touted parts of the bill that seek to bolster school-safety, including a provision that would allow private schools to participate in a controversial program that allows armed “guardians” on campuses.
The bill also will provide money for school hardening.
Many supporters labeled the measure a “constitutional carry” bill, in reference to Second Amendment constitutional rights. But as the bill has moved through the legislative process, a debate simmered about whether the “constitutional carry” label is a good fit for the proposal — with some gun-rights advocates arguing it was a misnomer.
“This bill is a half-measure and is not what gun owners were promised. It isn’t true constitutional carry because it doesn’t include an open carry provision. This bill is weak and failed leadership on part of Gov. DeSantis and the Republican legislative leadership. Gun owners deserve better,” Matt Collins, a former gun lobbyist who lives in Central Florida, said in a statement.
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