Six years after lawmakers passed a bill to increase the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21, a House panel approved a measure to repeal that provision.
The 2018 age limit increase was one part of a package bill that included measures increasing security at schools. But now the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee voted 11-5 along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed, to move the limit back to 18.
"Restoring the rights of young adults to purchase a long gun for not only self-defense, but for sporting, is very important in my rural area," said Rep. Bobby Payne, a Palatka Republican sponsoring HB 1223. "We quail hunt, we do a lot of bird hunting. It's important for those individuals to have their rights restored, and the age of majority is 18."
The experience of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018, which left 17 dead, including 14 students, permeated the debate over the bill. The shooter was a former student who was 19 at the time. He used an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon.
"There is no need to backtrack on the safety advances but sadly his piece of legislation does just that," Tony Montalto told the committee. Montalto's daughter, Gina Montalto, was killed in the massacre.
He urged lawmakers not to tinker with the gun law restrictions included in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act passed after the shooting. "That law is written in the blood of the Parkland victims, including my beautiful daughter Gina."
Gun rights activists, though, said the bill merely affirms the rights of young adults, who can join the military and become a police officer, to own long guns.
"The fact that the state of Florida has determined that they don't have the mental capacity to own a firearm is ludicrous," said Luis Valdez, Florida state director of Gun Owners of America.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act included two other gun law restrictions — a ban on bump stocks and required a three-day waiting period or the completion of a background check to purchase a firearm. GOP leaders in the Legislature at the time of the massacre, along with then-Gov. Rick Scott, approved the legislation.
That bill split both major parties, as some Republicans voted against it because of the gun control provisions, while some Democrats objected to a part of the bill allowing school personnel who complete training to carry a firearm at school.
Now, Democrats are objecting to the move to roll back the gun control portion of the landmark legislation.
"It was a child whose brain was not fully developed, obtaining a gun and coming in and committing a complete massacre," said Rep. Michelle Rayner, a St. Petersburg Democrat, referring to the shooter. "I don't know what we're doing."
But it's unclear whether the bill will pass the Legislature this year. There's no companion measure in the Senate, which must take up and pass it in the remaining six weeks of the Regular Session.
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