The Florida House has again passed legislation (HB 133) dropping the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18. The vote was 74-37, with five Republicans joining the majority of Democrats in opposing it and one Democrat (Jose Alvarez from Osceola County) supporting the measure.
But for the fourth year in a row, the likelihood of the state repealing the law is doubtful, as a companion bill in the Senate has yet to be filed. A similar situation has played out during the past three legislative sessions, with the measure passing the House and dying in the Senate.
Florida lawmakers raised the age to purchase a long gun from 18 to 21 as part of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, in the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting in Parkland that resulted in the deaths of 17 people.
The measure under debate also would allow a person 18 or older to purchase a handgun from a private seller, although a federal ban prohibits anyone under 21 from purchasing a handgun from a federal firearms licensee.
Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, said lowering the legal age would contribute further to what she said is an erosion of gun safety in Florida.
“We don’t require permits,” she said. “We don’t require training to own a gun. We don’t require safe gun storage, and now we allow everyone to open carry, so literally these 18 to 21 year olds who are not fully developed, who are not thinking rationally, who cannot think of consequences of the actions, actually can lawfully carry their AR-15 on their back and walk around. That’s a dangerous situation.”
Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, went on an extended discussion about how the debate about gun violence wasn’t about guns at all. The crisis is “with us,” he argued, adding that mass shootings became a phenomenon only over the past three decades. Instead, he said, the House could be talking about the breakdown of the two-parent family and the loss of faith.
“We could talk about things that really might get us somewhere, but we have this distraction, and history over centuries teaches us that that’s not the answer, because it didn’t happen back then, yet it happens today,” Black said.
Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, D-Parkland, was mayor of that city when the shooting happened in 2018. She said the bipartisan vote in the Legislature to raise the age was “because people decided then that the cost of doing nothing was too high and was something that they wouldn’t be able to live with.
“I feel that going back on what was done then, the political courage that was done then, would be devastating and heartbreaking, because it’s so hard to find that kind of bipartisan political courage these days,” she said.
The effort to raise the legal age has been supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis and gained momentum this spring when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced he would not defend the law after a federal appeals court again upheld its constitutionality after it was challenged in federal court by the NRA.
“If the NRA decides to seek further review at SCOTUS, I am directing my office not to defend this law,” Uthmeier said in March, not long after DeSantis appointed him to his office. “Men and women old enough to fight and die for our country should be able to purchase firearms to defend themselves and their families.”
Twenty-one states have raised the age to purchase a long gun to 21 in America, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
The bill sponsor, Rep. Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, said he was attempting to correct an inequity in Florida law.
“This country has a problem with school shootings, but the answer to that is not to infringe upon the constitutional rights of law-abiding people,” he said.
Among those watching the debate from the gallery was De’ja Charles, 20, a student at Florida A&M University and a member of Students Demand Action, a gun safety group.
“We know that 18 to 20 year-olds are three times more likely to commit gun homicides, as opposed to those over 21,” she said, citing statistics compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety.
“We should be trying to make it safer in Florida for us to live our lives. There should be Parkland victims here today and it’s difficult to have the courage to express your views when you have representatives that are blatantly just going against it.”
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