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It was seven years ago this week — March 9, 2018.
On a profoundly sad day, former Gov. Rick Scott signed Senate Bill 7026, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act.
At a somber bill-signing less than a month after the mass shooting at the school, Scott was joined by parents of the Parkland victims and area legislators in his office in the state Capitol in Tallahassee.
“Know that through the passage of this legislation,” Scott said of the 17 Parkland victims, “they will never be forgotten.”
That’s not how it looks now.
A House committee easily passed a bill that would repeal a key part of SB 702 that prohibited the sales of rifles and other long guns to people under age 21 (the Parkland shooter, 19 at the time, bought an assault weapon legally). The age restriction passed over the NRA’s vehement opposition.
Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel
Steve Bousquet, Sun Sentinel columnist.
The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee approved the repeal bill, HB 759, and it wasn’t close. The party-line vote was 13 to 5, with Republicans voting yes, and Democrats voting no. Eliminating the age 21 provision has the strong support of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In a House committee debate, the arguments were wearily familiar.
Democrats said far too many people already own guns in Florida, and they cited the risks of letting emotionally fragile teens buy and possess the high-powered killing machines.
Republicans said Second Amendment rights should not be infringed upon, and that the more guns that are out there and the fewer gun-free zones we have, the safer we will all be.
“You better think twice, because a lot of people are armed in this state,” said Republican Rep. Taylor Yarkosky of Montverde. “We are messing with the Bill of Rights.”
The sponsor of the House bill is Rep. Michelle Salzman, a Pensacola Republican and an Army veteran who said two members of her own family were gunshot victims and that one, her uncle, died.
In a very brief acknowledgement of the tragedy that inspired the original legislation, Salzman said: “The humanity is not lost on any of us.”
She made the same old argument that anybody who’s old enough to vote or serve in the military should also be able to buy their weapons of choice. That conveniently overlooks the fact that a federal law prohibits anyone under 21 from purchasing a handgun.
“The ability to purchase and utilize a firearm is your constitutional right, and reinstating those rights is the right thing to do for Floridians,” Salzman said in a statement she posted on the House website. “We must stop infringing on the constitutional rights of law-abiding adults who are old enough to serve in our military and make other significant life decisions.”
Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, one of five Democrats who voted no, along with Rep, Kelly Skidmore of Boca Raton, spoke up on behalf of the Parkland families.
“We owe it to these families not to go backwards,” Bartleman said. “Don’t slap these families in the face. We can’t do this.”
Yes they can, and they will. It is a certainty in the Florida House, where Republicans hold an 86-33 advantage with one seat vacant.
The House bill has one more committee vote, in the Judiciary Committee, and then will go to the floor for a vote by the full House that is guaranteed to be along party lines.
A slew of pro-gun laws is on the table, from allowing judges to bring their guns to the courthouse to a two-month tax-free holiday for buyers of guns and ammunition.
Repealing the age provision has passed the House in each of the past two years, but it was swiftly rejected both times in the Senate, largely because of the personal opposition of the then-Senate president, Kathleen Passidomo of Naples.
The current president, Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, has not taken a firm stand on eliminating the age restriction.
“I’m working through that in my mind,” he told reporters on the opening day of the session. He should listen closely to his predecessor.
Supporters of the age restriction see a glimmer of hope in that Albritton opposes allowing people to openly carry firearms, on the grounds that many local law enforcement officials consider it a dangerous idea.
It’s been seven years.
In Tallahassee’s relentlessly trigger-happy Capitol, what happened in Parkland in 2018 is starting to look like it’s a fading memory.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.
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