Florida House Panel Supports Lowering the Age to Buy Guns
TALLAHASSEE, Florida. — Backed by Speaker Paul Renner, a House committee on Monday approved a bill that would lower the minimum age for buying rifles and other long guns in Florida from 21 to 18.
The bill (HB 1543) repeals part of a 2018 law that sets the minimum age at 21 after a gunman killed 17 students and faculty at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nicholas Cruz, then 19 years old, used a semi-automatic rifle to carry out the attack.
The Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Monday voted 12 to 5 to approve the bill. Under the 2018 law, individuals under the age of 21 can receive rifles and other long guns as gifts, but cannot purchase them.
“Florida House is restoring the ability of young people to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Palm Coast State’s Renner said in a prepared statement following the vote. “Florida allows adults between the ages of 18 and 20 to get a long gun by gifting it to them. This bill expands Second Amendment rights and improves public safety by requiring young people who intend to purchase long guns to complete a background check process that complies with Florida law.”
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But opponents questioned why the Legislature changed course five years after including a 21-year minimum age in a sweeping school safety bill that passed quickly after the Parkland shooting. Federal law prohibits persons under the age of 21 from purchasing handguns.
“I just find it when we have a shooting after school shooting after a shooting at school, kids are dying in my neighborhood and this gun violence is coming from 18, 19, 20 year olds that we slap people in the face when we say, well, let them come with guns,” Rep. Michelle Rainer-Goulsby, D-St. Petersburg said.
Monday’s vote came after a bench of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of the 2018 law. The National Rifle Association is in a lengthy legal battle alleging that the 21-year minimum age violates the Second Amendment.
The Court of Appeal traced the history of gun regulation back to the Reconstruction era. It also stated that people between the ages of 18 and 21 could receive weapons as gifts.
“To begin with, this act (law) is no more restrictive than its predecessors: while the law burdens the right of persons aged 18 to 20 to purchase firearms, unlike its Reconstruction-era counterparts, it still leaves – 20-year-olds are free to purchase any type of firearm, including a “typical self-defense weapon, a handgun … by legal means, if they do not buy weapons,” Judge Robin Rosenbaum wrote in the conclusion. .
But House bill sponsor Bobby Payne of R-Palatka said the state has the right to set a minimum age. Payne said he voted for the 2018 law because it included safety measures at schools he supported.
“I consider it a constitutional violation of the right of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds not to give them the right to firearms, long guns, I would say shotguns and rifles,” Payne said.
As of Monday afternoon, the Senate version of the bill had not been filed.
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