Lori Berman, Katherine Waldron file ‘property rights’ bills to protect residents from stray bullets

If you’re a Florida resident living in a rural area not exclusively zoned for residential use, beware of stray bullets; there isn’t much, legally, to protect you from them.

State law allows people to shoot weapons outdoors in areas with residential densities of less than one home per acre. If they accidentally fire a round that hits a nearby property or person, they’re largely free of facing any criminal penalty.

Boynton Beach Sen. Lori Berman and Wellington Rep. Katherine Waldron hope to change that troublesome allowance through twin bills (SB 270, HB 259) they filed for the 2024 Legislative Session.

They’re calling the legislation a property rights bill. The gist is, keep your bullets on your property or face charges.

Residents across the state have complained for years about errantly fired bullets from home-based shooting ranges crossing over into their property and striking their belongings, pets or, in numerous unfortunate cases, them or their family members.

Since 1987, Florida has prohibited local governments from enacting gun-restricting ordinances. Some counties and cities passed strictures anyway. So in 2011, at the urging of the National Rifle Association, state lawmakers added teeth to the ban — $100,000 fines for governments and $5,000 fines for police.

Five years later, the Legislature unanimously approved legislation, which then-Gov. Rick Scott signed, limiting home-based shooting and hunting activities to largely agricultural areas with no more than one residential dwelling per acre.

The law does not apply to people defending their lives, property or “performing official duties requiring the discharge of a firearm.” It also excludes instances in which the bullet was accidentally shot or “does not pose a reasonably foreseeable risk to life, safety, or property.”

Berman and Waldron’s legislation targets those last two exceptions. Violations would be punished as first-degree misdemeanors carrying prison sentences of up to one year and fines of up to $1,000.

Waldron, who said Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw supports her bill, believes the intent of the law as it’s written now wasn’t to enable Florida’s rural residents to recklessly fire their weapons.

She stressed that her measure doesn’t curb anyone’s gun rights; it only protects people.

“All we’re saying is, it’s fine if you want to shoot on your property,” she said. “But keep your bullets there too.”

The legislation is similar to a bill Berman carried in 2019 with House support from former Rep. Emily Slosberg that would have made it a third-degree felony to fire a bullet into someone else’s property without their permission.

Both measures died without a hearing in the Republican-dominated Legislature. Berman, Waldron and Slosberg are Democrats.

Berman said this year’s attempt was inspired by the shooting of a Lake Worth Beach woman named Nicole Adams, who was struck in the back by a stray bullet while on her property Sept. 10.

Adams and her husband operate a nonprofit that works with kids in the foster care system. Their plan is to eventually have youths who age out of the system stay with them on their farmland.

She heard the shooting for the first time this April and saw its result as several bullets struck trees on her property line. Five months later, one hit her.

“I went flying. It had to be like four feet,” she said. “I couldn’t breathe.”

Miraculously, the bullet — which police later identified as a .45 caliber round — didn’t enter Adams’ body. She said the officers who responded to the incident, which resulted in her going to the hospital, were hesitant to go to the shooter’s home because it was an “active shooting scene.”

Police photos of the makeshift outdoor shooting range and the weapons used show an array of AR-15-style rifles, a low and unfinished backstop and miniscule targets set up with an open area behind them. The bullet that struck Adams went through a grouping of trees, over a canal and onto her property.

“Almost all of those weapons could shoot rounds at 2,700 feet per second,” she said. “If the bullet had come from one of those, I wouldn’t be able to sit here telling you about this. I was only 950 feet from where they were target shooting.”

The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) didn’t charge anyone connected to the shooting because it didn’t violate existing statutes.

Adams frequently hears shooting from the inconsiderate neighbor and some still put holes in trees near her home. Other neighbors have complained of shootings for years.

The PBSO said that between January and October this year alone, deputies have investigated three non-fatal injuries related to target shooting in the West Boynton Beach area.

Adams said it’s frustrating to know that it’s easier for residents to be shot by mistake than to build on their land.

“I put a shed on my property, and I had to go through three different permitting situations and regulations. You have people regulating these silly things, but you don’t have anybody regulating how somebody can shoot their guns,” she said. “And we’re not against guns. We own guns. We shoot. But we do it responsibly, and (it’s unthinkable that) there’s no regulation to protect my family and property.”

Berman said the legislation is a commonsense solution everyone should be able to get behind.

“That doesn’t mean it’ll pass in Tallahassee,” she said. “Hopefully it will.”

But it’s got at least one Republican supporter: North Fort Myers Rep. Spencer Roach, who in July discovered a bullet had been shot into the front window of his home, narrowly missing an infant rocker before lodging into the wall behind it.

Like Adams, Roach takes care of foster children. None were living with him at the time.

It was the second time in roughly two years Roach, a decorated U.S. Coast Guard veteran, had dealt with a shooting in civilian life. In early August 2021, he and his staff came to work to find a bullet hole in the wall of his district office — the result of an accidentally loaded and misfired gun from a women’s self-defense class.

He indicated he’d back Berman and Waldron’s legislation.

“My read of the bill is that it criminalizes the accidental discharge of a firearm in a residential area, with an exception for the defense of life and property,” he said. “Holding people accountable for accidental discharges that could potentially injure or kill someone seems eminently logical, and I was actually shocked that this is not already the law.”