Randy Fine’s bill to allow guns on college campuses shot down in first Senate stop

Legislation to allow guns on college campuses died in its first committee hearing after too few GOP lawmakers were in the room to keep it alive.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted 4-3 against the legislation (SB 814), which would have enabled lawful gun owners to carry their weapons onto any college or university campus, including dormitories and resident halls.

Brevard County Republican Sen. Randy Fine said the change is needed after Jewish college students faced threats of “on-campus Muslim terror” following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“An 18-, a 19-, a 20-year-old deserves to be able to walk through campus, deserves to be able to fight their way out of a building if people hold them there, deserves when a mob surrounds them and attacks them — it’s happened at my alma mater — that they can do something about it,” he said.

“You have the right to defend yourself, and that right doesn’t go away because you walked onto a college campus.”

Too many of Fine’s Senate colleagues thought the bill was too drastic a change. Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia joined Democratic Sens. Mack Bernard, Jason Pizzo and Carlos Guillermo Smith in voting “no.”

Republican Sens. Joe Gruters, Clay Yarborough and Jonathan Martin voted “yes.”

Republican Sens. Jennifer Bradley and Corey Simon were absent.

SB 814 lost its House counterpart (HB 31) early this year when Republican sponsor Joel Rudman, a former Navarre Representative who resigned for an unsuccessful run at Congress, withdrew the proposal.

The vote came after the NRA and Florida Smart Justice signaled support for Fine’s measure and roughly a dozen students, including several wearing keffiyehs to signal their support of Palestinians, spoke against it.

University of Central Florida student Muah Dahn, an organizer with the progressive Florida Student Power group, said she attended high school with the man who shot up a Jacksonville Dollar General store in 2023. She noted that prior to the shooting, he’d tried to enter Edward Waters University, but was denied entry by security.

Teresa Hodge, an associate professor at Broward College and President of United Faculty of Florida, summarized her lengthy educational and professional background to emphasize that none of it included firearm training.

“I was not trained to use a gun for academic or educational purposes,” she said. “You should not shift the responsibility for protecting students from trained law enforcement officers to private individuals who do not have the training to deescalate a situation or deal with life-threatening confrontations.”

Smith, an Orlando lawmaker, said that aside from being ill-conceived, Fine’s legislation was “poorly written” and “a publicity stunt,” considering it had little chance of passing without a House analog.

He cited a Senate staff analysis, which said that under SB 814’s changes, guns could be brought on campus, but not stored there, thus negating its stated intent of enabling students to protect themselves.

Smith added that studies have found correlations between access to guns and higher suicide rates and that there is no clear evidence to show “campus carry” makes students safer.

“It’s a dangerous combination to take what is already a high-stress environment for young people on college campuses, where they’re facing academic pressures, where there’s mental health struggles, where there’s social conflicts — where there’s rampant alcohol and drug use and abuse and sexual assault — and add firearms to the equation,” he said.

Pizzo, a Hollywood lawmaker and the leader of Senate Democrats, said he’d wrestled with whether to support or oppose Fine’s bill. He said he’d seen “some pretty horrible incident against Jewish students” since Oct. 7, and that had it been his sons “held hostage” in a building on campus, he would have told them to do whatever they had to do to get out.

He talked about working with Fine on creating a regular funding mechanism for security at Jewish day schools that have been targets of antisemitic attention. And if that was the proposal Fine had brought, Pizzo said he would have voted for it.

“I will chip in personally for more added security on campus, (but) I just don’t trust those kids with guns,” he said before turning his attention to his Democratic colleagues on the dais. “Shake your head all you want, but if someone was held hostage for being gay, for being Black, for being Hispanic, for being Jewish, for whatever it is, (this should be the response from) the Democrat Party, that we’re inclusive (because) we either mean it that we’re equal or we don’t.”

This is likely the last time Fine will run the bill in Tallahassee. He tendered his resignation, effective March 31, in November within hours of announcing his bid for Florida’s 6th Congressional District.

In January, Fine — who carries an endorsement from Donald Trump — trounced two underfunded Primary foes to clinch the GOP nomination.