A House bill seeking to repeal a post-Parkland school shooting law that raised the age consumers could buy firearms has failed to gain momentum this Session.
Its demise means the age at which individuals may purchase any firearm will remain 21.
The House advanced HB 133 with a 74-37 vote following an emotional partisan debate in January, but the Senate, which did not consider a companion bill, did not take up the House measure.
The bill has faced the same fate since 2023. Every year, the House passes the measure, but the Senate balks.
Ahead of the 2025 Legislative Session, Senate President Ben Albritton warned lawmakers must exercise “real caution” if they were to lower the gun-buying age from 21 to 18.
In January, he had been less clear on his intentions when he told reporters it was up to the Committee Chairs and the Senate’s “appetite for such a bill as a whole” on whether the proposal would get brought up in the upper chamber this year.
Asked for comment, Albritton didn’t have anything new to add, but his spokeswoman reminded Albritton “has previously stated that there is not support in the Senate for this legislation.”
The original legislation was approved in a rare act of bipartisan support.
The Legislature approved the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act and then-Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law to raise the minimum after a 19-year-old gunman murdered 17 people, including 14 students and three staff, with an AR-15 weapon that same year at the Parkland school.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) unsuccessfully challenged Florida’s law in court.
But as Florida has shifted more toward the right and Republicans who supported the 2018 law have hit term limits and left the Legislature, some conservatives have been pushing to repeal the 2018 law. Most other states set 18 as the minimum age to buy a long gun from a federal firearms licensee, according to House staff analysis for HB 133.
Bill sponsor Rep. Tyler Sirois called the 2018 law the “wrong public policy for Florida to pursue,” although he contended “the Legislature responded at the time the way that they thought best.”
“I wasn’t a member of the Legislature when that tragedy occurred. My view is this is the correct public policy to pursue to restore the rights of law-abiding 18-year-olds,” the Merritt Island Republican said during committee debate.
Other Second Amendment advocates argued it made sense to lower the gun-buying age especially now that Florida is an open carry state.
“It comes down to a very simple thing,” added Luis Valdes, the Florida State Director for Gun Owners of America during committee debate. “Adults at 18 years old have the right to keep and bear arms.”
But gun advocates and Sirois were met with fierce debate from several lawmakers who served as local officials in Parkland at the time of the shooting.
Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, the former Parkland Mayor, said repealing the gun-buying age law would be “devastating” and “heartbreaking.”
“I am so incredibly proud of the bipartisan members who voted for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. It’ll be now almost eight years ago. They showed political courage and did not cower to the loud voices of a very, very small minority,” Hunschofsky said on the House floor.
“This bill has stood the test of time. It has stood constitutional challenges. There is no reason that the current law should be rolled back, because it’s working.”
March for Our Lives, the League of Women Voters of Florida and anti-gun violence groups advocated loudly against HB 133.
“President Albritton, we urge you to use your authority as Senate President to prevent HB 133 from becoming law. Remember the promises made after our state’s darkest day. Remember those who buried their loved ones because a teenager could access a gun. Honor the bipartisan commitment lawmakers made in 2018: never again. Refuse to file a companion bill to HB 133, as you have done in previous years,” they wrote in a December letter to the Senate that was signed by 12 different organizations.
The advocates warned allowing 18-year-olds to buy guns could be deadly since young people’s brains aren’t fully developed. That means they could be at risk for dying by suicide or hurting others if they had access to a gun at 18 while still in high school.
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who was a state Representative when the Parkland shooting happened in his district, said the age 21 requirement made sense because of how specific the law was written.
“It does not prevent possession, so people’s constitutional rights are not inhibited. A grandparent or parent who wants to go hunting with their 18-year-old, they can. If a parent or grandparent wants to buy their 18-year-old a firearm, they can,” Moskowitz said at a press conference as he followed HB 133 through the Florida Legislature.
“But a high school student cannot go into a gun store, walk out with two AR-15s, unlimited ammunition, body armor and walk into school on their own. That is what that law has prevented.”
