TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2013 The Florida House is again moving to pass a controversial bill that would lower the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18, though the Senate has not given any public sign that it is on board.<\/p>\n
The Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Tuesday voted 11-5 along party lines to approve the bill (HB 133), which now only needs to clear the House Judiciary Committee before it could go to the full House during the 2026 legislative session.<\/p>\n
The bill would reverse a decision made by the Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott to increase the minimum gun-purchase age after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 people at the school.<\/p>\n
The House passed bills in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to lower the minimum age to 18, but the Senate did not go along. A Senate bill on the issue has not been filed for the 2026 session, which will start Jan. 13.<\/p>\n
House Majority Leader Tyler Sirois, a Merritt Island Republican who is sponsoring the House bill, told subcommittee members that there is \u201cstill time for that conversation\u201d with the Senate, where bills can be filed until the start of the session. Sirois declined to comment on the bill after the meeting.<\/p>\n
Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, hasn\u2019t publicly taken a stance on the issue. But such a bill would have to go through the Rules Committee, where Chairwoman Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, has said she isn\u2019t going to repeal the 2018 legislation.<\/p>\n
The National Rifle Association has challenged the constitutionality of the higher gun-purchasing age. The group lost in federal district and appellate courts and has an appeal pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, told lawmakers Tuesday that each time the bill is introduced it \u201creopens wounds\u201d for Parkland survivors.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, that wound is healing and you rip it off. And I don\u2019t really understand why when you know there\u2019s not a Senate companion (bill),\u201d said Bartleman, who was on the Broward County School Board in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were there the night of the shooting,\u201d Bartleman added. \u201cWe went to the funerals. We dealt with the aftermath. But you continue to bring this up time and time again. And it just causes so much pain for these families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Mike Gottlieb, D-Davie, described teens as \u201cimpulsive\u201d and said requiring them to wait three years to buy a long gun \u201cis not a huge constitutional violation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rest of us have the right to be safe,\u201d Gottlieb said.<\/p>\n
Federal law has long set the minimum age at 21 for handgun purchases.<\/p>\n
Rep. Jessica Baker, R-Jacksonville, said the state law created an \u201cunfair situation.\u201d While people under 21 cannot buy rifles or other long guns, they can receive them as gifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cif we believe in equality, how is it that a young adult from a well-off family can get a long gun as a gift and protect their home and their families, but a young adult with no family support cannot?\u201d Baker said. \u201cWe\u2019re basically saying you can defend yourself, but only if you have parents who can afford to give you a long gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luis Valdes, Florida State director at Gun Owners Of America, called the age-21 requirement \u201cludicrously hypocritical.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is horrible that we have a Republican supermajority that campaigns on being pro-gun, but some of our Republican lawmakers actually vote against this bill or don\u2019t even bring it up in other chambers,\u201d Valdes said.<\/p>\n
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who took office in February, has declined to defend the law at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bill is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court with the support of the Florida attorney general, because now we have one that actually can read a case decision,\u201d Eric Friday, general counsel for the Second Amendment group Florida Carry, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2013 The Florida House is again moving to pass a controversial bill that would lower the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,5557,4260,1289,33094,99,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-54047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-guns","12":"tag-james-uthmeier","13":"tag-leon-county","14":"tag-parkland-shooting","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-tallahassee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}