Bill lowering gun-buying age on target to reach House floor over objections of Parkland families

Jurors tour the still-horrific crime scene. Image via AP.

Legislation that lowers the age to buy firearms, reversing restrictions implemented after the Parkland shooting, is moving to the House floor.

The House Judiciary Committee on a 16-6 vote advanced a bill (HB 759) that would allow 18-year-olds to purchase or take legal ownership of firearms, including the type used in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. That marked the last committee stop this year for the legislation before the full House membership can take it up for consideration.

Several family members of individuals killed in that tragedy spoke out during the committee hearing, urging lawmakers not to roll back gun access restrictions put in place in response.

Broward County School Board Chair Debbie Hixon, whose husband, Chris Hixon, was Campus Security Monitor at the Parkland high school and one of three adults murdered there, said lowering the age to purchase guns would betray families who demanded a policy response at the time.

“To me, this feels like salt being poured into an open wound. Families, very early into grief and shock of what happened, came up here to Tallahassee and asked you to do something, and you did it,” Debbie Hixon said.

“You did it as a bipartisan body that believed in the things that were in this bill. And you know what? It made our communities safer. And now you want to repeal things. To me, that makes me feel like you have forgotten who my husband and the other 16 victims were.”

A jury in 2023 convicted the mass shooter. He was 19 at the time and used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle purchased shortly before committing the crime.

But Rep. Michelle Salzman, a Pensacola Republican, said it was important to restore the Second Amendment rights of adult Floridians. She sponsored the legislation, and said the state erred when compromising the constitutional rights of adults.

“I’ve had several events in my own community where we have people in Pensacola who are living at home with young children, 18-, 19-year-old single moms, who have not had the opportunity to have that,” Salzman said, “and they have expressed to me that they would like to be able to purchase a firearm for the protection of their home.”

Gun rights advocates said the Parkland bill passed by Republicans in 2018 overreached, and that the change in gun-buying age for long guns to 21 years old did not address the root cause of the tragedy.

“As a detective, I sat through the investigations and presentations for what happened in Parkland. It was horrific and it was a failure in government,” said Luis Valdes of Gun Owners of America.

“Again, gun control wouldn’t have solved this. The state’s argument that any adult under the age of 21 doesn’t have the mental faculties to possess and own a firearm is ludicrous, especially when we let 19-year-olds become sworn law enforcement officers in the state of Florida.”

But Democrats in the committee noted that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law when the National Rifle Association challenged it on constitutional grounds.

“I’ve read the Second Amendment. Please point to me the part that says you get an AR-15,” said Rep. Dan Daley, a Parkland Democrat. “Please point to the part that says you get to be 18 and 20 years old and have an AR-15. Show me the words. You can’t.”

The House in two prior Legislative Sessions also approved a reduction in gun-buying age, but such a policy has not moved in the Senate.

“God willing, it won’t,” Daley said. “But every single time we have to have this conversation, folks like Debbie Hixon have the scab ripped off.”

A companion bill (SB 920) sponsored by Sen. Jay Collins, a Tampa Republican, has not been scheduled for a committee hearing this year.