After the massacre of students and teachers at Parkland High School in 2018, the Florida legislature raised the age for buying a gun from 18 to 21. That decision was just upheld by a federal appeals court.
However, the Florida legislature wants to lower the age back to 18, so as to restore the Second Amendnent rights of 18-20 year olds. What about the Second Amendment rights of younger children! Shouldn’t any child old enough to carry a gun and able to pay for one enjoy their rights too? Why should eight-year-olds go to the playground or to school without a deadly weapon? Imagine playing with your junior high friends after school, everyone locked and loaded.
With backing from Speaker Paul Renner, a House panel on Monday approved a bill that would lower the minimum age from 21 to 18 to buy rifles and other long guns in Florida.
The bill (HB 1543) would reverse part of a 2018 law that set the minimum age at 21 after a gunman killed 17 students and faculty members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semi-automatic rifle to carry out the attack.
The Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Subcommittee voted 12-5 along party lines Monday to approve the bill. Under the 2018 law, people under 21 can receive rifles and other long guns as gifts but cannot purchase them.
“The Florida House is restoring the ability of young adults to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Renner, R-Palm Coast, said in a prepared statement after the vote. “Florida allows 18- to 20-year-old adults to obtain a long gun by having it gifted to them. This bill expands Second Amendment rights and improves public safety, because it requires young adults who have the intent of purchasing a long gun to go through the background check process that is consistent with Florida law.”
“The Florida House is restoring the ability of young adults to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Renner, R-Palm Coast, said in a prepared statement after the vote. “Florida allows 18- to 20-year-old adults to obtain a long gun by having it gifted to them. This bill expands Second Amendment rights and improves public safety, because it requires young adults who have the intent of purchasing a long gun to go through the background check process that is consistent with Florida law.”
But opponents questioned why the Legislature would reverse course five years after including the 21-year-old minimum age in a broad school-safety bill that passed quickly after the Parkland shooting. Federal law prevents people under 21 from buying handguns.
“I just find it, when we are having shooting after school shooting after school shooting, there are children who are dying in my district, and this gun violence is happening by 18-, 19- 20-year-olds, that we are slapping people in the face when we’re saying, well, let them go have a gun,” Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby, D-St. Petersburg, said.
Monday’s vote came after a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of the 2018 law. The National Rifle Association has waged a long-running legal challenge, arguing that the 21-year-old minimum age violates the Second Amendment.
It is no longer safe to vacation in Florida. The state does not care about your life. Avoid Florida. Go to Puerto Rico.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Question: Does the background check reveal juvenile adjudications?
If it doesn’t, this bill is a joke. I mean, it’s a joke already, but this would be even worse.
The military requires varieties of personality and psychological tests at recruitment and boot camp (several sources from unofficial google search) and other categories through observation in boot camp.
If accurate (not trusting the internet as a primary source) – – – – the MILITARY will not put a gun in the hands of an 18 year old. But Florida allows it as do other states with no requirements including purchasing one with no screening.
Gregg Abbott is eager to arm every Texan and remove every limit on gun ownership. Competing with DeSantis to win NRA governor of the year award.
I was surprised to learn that Puerto Rico is the third-safest U.S. state or territory, at least by this measure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_violent_crime_rate
Happy to hear that. I spent three beautiful weeks in Cabo Rojo on the west coast and felt very safe. Good restaurants, inexpensive accommodations, friendly people.
NRA = No one remains alive
NRA = Noxious Russia Abettors
Russia, which sends its spies here to join the NRA and assist them in spreading the poison of guns across the country.
I wonder if anyone has gone to court challenging the threats caused by the greedy misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment by the largest weapons industry in the world and that industry’s dangerous and ignorant supporters.
After all the 14th Amendment says,
Section 1 Rights
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
And? Not getting your point.
As long as they go through a course and have no criminal record fine. My youngest son graduated Boot Camp in the U.S. Army a few months after turning 18. He signed on the dotted line that he would fight to the death for this country, tell me why he shouldn’t have a weapon again. Before he was 21 he was jumping out of aircraft for this country and training forces in several different countries in Europe.
Gary,
I’d give your son a license.
I think Florida intends to hand them out indiscriminately.
Florida has also proposed a bill to allow concealed carrying without a permit. They’re trying to bring back the gun fights we used see in the old West.
Allowing concealed carry without a permit will increase gun sales.
Even people who don’t like guns will think they need to protect themselves.
Public safety has a very low priority in red states.
The earliest laws against concealed carry were passed in Southern states in the early 1800s. A REAL gentleman did not engage in such practices.
Well, no. Guns were highly regulated in the Old West. While you certainly were fine going about armed in the wilderness, or hunting, or traveling, most towns forbade possession and display of firearms in towns.
The trope of the showdown at high noon on Main Street was an invention. The first laws of Dodge City were gun control laws. People were required to surrender their guns to the law upon entering the town. (In some towns, you were given a chit for your guns and told you’d get them back when you left the city limits.)
The most famous gunfight of all, the OK Corral, erupted when the Earps and Doc Holliday found out the Clanton Gang had not surrendered their guns when they arrived in Tombstone, and went to arrest them.
Thanks for that history! Fascinating.
If you grew up watching Westerns, you have been lied to your whole life.
18, 18, 18, do I hear 17? The only logical conclusion is to develop nanotechnology to arm fetuses in wombs. That way they won’t have kill “abortionists” because good fetuses with a gun and all that.
Greg, have you thought of the potential for fetus size guns?
Have you ever seen the schlock 60s sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage? A crew and “spaceship” are miniaturized to go into another scientist’s body to conduct a delicate medical procedure and get out before they return to normal size. Along the way they fight anti-bodies and other biological processes. Since The Flintstones is now officially in the history standards for evolution, there is precedent that this was real and can be replicated. If they can do that, a gun for a fetus is a piece of cake. Precedent, wishful thinking, and all that.
Repeat after me: It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie, it’s only…
Arm Fetuses! Florida Strong!
Gun safety training is murder.
War is peace!
The best news I have heard yet. This could have some Darwinian effect. Fortunately the State will run out of drinkable water long before Flor-id-duh man goes extinct.
We hear in Floruhduh is planin on deputisin ever one uv are white teen agers n isshoeing them all bazookas and tactikal nukes so they kin stop all the terrorizers cumin in from Mexico and New York.
We is calling this the Floruhduh Gard.
Well at least it is well regulated. Spews —- all day.