gun control

Twenty years ago, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed the first “stand your ground” law, calling it a “good, common-sense, anti-crime issue.” A historian makes a case as to why this police, open carry and permitless carry raises security concerns in Florida.

A proposal that would lower the minimum age requirement to purchase a long gun in Florida from 21 to 18 won approval in its first committee stop in the Florida House on Tuesday.

Broward leaders expressed their concerns with property tax reform, confusion over gun laws, and frustrations with law enforcement funding.

Democrats in Florida’s Legislature have filed more than a dozen gun control bills less than two months after the “Gunshine State” legalized open carry.

Following Wedneday’s decision by the Florida First District Court of Appeal striking the state’s ban on openly carrying firearms, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey says his deputies will no longer enforce the ban – even though the law hasn’t changed yet.

The Republican-controlled House voted 78-34 to pass the bill (HB 759), though it remains unclear whether the Senate will take up the issue. The House passed repeal bills in 2023 and 2024, but they did not get through the Senate.

Gun rights advocates have been fighting to overturn a Florida law setting the minimum age to buy a gun at 21 since the day the measure was signed, in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.

Years after the shooting at the South Florida high school, where a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 more, lawmakers are still grappling with how far gun control laws should go to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

The proposals would repeal the state’s red flag law and prevent people under the age of 21 from buying a rifle.

Manuel and Patricia Oliver, the parents of Joaquin Oliver, one of the victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, say they hope the calls will pressure the lawmakers to shift their positions. The Olivers want the sale of military-style semi-automatic rifles banned.

The National Rifle Association has lost more than a million members in the years since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Organizers with the gun control group March For Our Lives say it's proof that survivors from Parkland and beyond "are a force to be reckoned with."

Crime data in the United States is notoriously incomplete, but experts agreed that general trends from state and FBI data show people ages 18 to 20 — and in many datasets people in their early-to-mid 20s — are likelier to commit deadly shootings than other age groups.