Jacob Ogles
Florida’s minimum gun-buying age will remain at 21 years old.
A proposal to return the minimum age to 18 is officially dead this year. The House in April passed a bill (HB 1543) on a 69-36 vote that would have reduced the purchase age for rifles and long guns. But no such legislation was ever filed in the Senate, and the clock has run out on the bill finding another vehicle to reach the Senate floor.
Gun safety advocates cheered the proposal’s demise.
“The Florida bill to lower the age to 18 to buy a gun in Florida is dead! As I said from the beginning of Session,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Parkland Democrat. “The Marjory Stoneman Douglas School safety bill that I helped pass five years ago remains intact.”
A debate over gun rights unfolded this Session less than five years after then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a law, the one sponsored by Moskowitz, that raised the age in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
The National Rifle Association sued over the legislation, arguing adults had a Second Amendment constitutional right to purchase firearms. But the state successfully defended the law in court.
State Rep. Bobby Payne, who sponsored the bill to reduce the gun-buying age, said most of the Parkland law has proven successful in limiting violence in Florida schools. “The interventions we put in place are the model for the U.S.,” he said.
But he and most Republicans in the Legislature argued restrictions on purchasing age should be revisited.
“Florida allows 18- to 20-year-old adults to obtain a long gun by having it gifted to them,” said House Speaker Paul Renner. “This bill expands Second Amendment rights and improves public safety, because it requires young adults who have the intent of purchasing a long gun to go through the background check process that is consistent with Florida law.”
However, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo made clear early in the Session the issue would not be revisited in the upper chamber.
“We don’t have it in the Senate,” she said. “Nobody filed it in the Senate, so there’s no bill to support.”
3 comments
Dont Say FLA
May 4, 2023 at 1:46 pm
Rhon DasPanties has a GOP Supermajority in Florida state government, but still failed to protect our 2nd Amendment rights. Say it ain’t so. Having everything handed to him on a silver platter, Rhon is nevertheless impotent. Seems like whenever it’s not something to do with transsexuals and/or drag queens, Rhon just ain’t that interested.
JD
May 4, 2023 at 2:23 pm
Really? What’s next? Lowering the drinking age to 21 and bringing back 3.2 beer? But similar other state GOP assclowns want to raise the voting age to 21?
Rnelson
May 7, 2023 at 7:59 am
A study done in the past year equates today’s 18 year olds with my generations 12 year olds. Most states require one to be 21 to buy a hand gun but 18 for a long gun. Why the disparity? Could it be that handguns are the #1 gun of choice in crime and homicides?
I see no reason that everything an 18 year old today can do legally shouldn’t be moved to 21, all gun ownership, voting, and military service except by volunteering or in the case of a draft.
And I’m a responsible gun owner.
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