Florida House Panel Advances Bill Erasing Key Post-Parkland Measure

Under federal law, an adult under the age of 21 cannot go into a gun store and purchase a handgun. That’s absolute BS in my book, but it could be worse. After all, they can still buy long guns, which can be used for many of the same purposes. Not all of them, and it shouldn’t matter one way or the other, but that’s part of why some people don’t see it as a major issue.

But in the wake of the Parkland shooting, Florida lawmakers got very stupid. They passed a number of gun control laws, including a ban on those same adults under 21 buying long guns. Not just so-called assault weapons, mind you, but literally anything. That denied many of those adults their Second Amendment rights entirely for all practical purposes.

Now, though, a Florida House panel just advanced a bill that would correct that particular sin once and for all.

A Florida House panel voted to repeal the minimum age requirement to purchase a rifle that was imposed after a 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17.   

The Criminal Justice subcommittee debated Nov. 18 and took public testimony for nearly an hour before voting 11–4 along party lines to advance the bill (HB 133) by House Majority Leader Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island.

But the bill’s fate is questionable at best. It has no Senate companion and there’s no sign the other chamber has an appetite to hear it should it pass the House.

Sirois said the measure aligns gun rights for 18-year-olds with other constitutional rights such as voting, serving on a jury, getting elected to certain offices and military service.

“Allowing an 18-year-old the right to go out and purchase a long gun to defend themselves and their family and their property is wholly in keeping with the rights and privileges I have outlined,” Sirois said.

Rep. Jessica Baker, R-Jacksonville, said the proposal corrects an inequity in Florida law where a teen can receive a rifle as a gift but otherwise cannot legally possess one.

“So we’re saying you can defend yourself, but only if you have parents who can afford to give you a long gun. Eighteen to 20 year-olds are legally adults. They work full time, they pay taxes, they serve in the military. If it’s legal for them to own the gun, they should be able to legally buy the gun,” Baker said.

Bingo.

If your right hinges on someone else doing something, it’s not a right. I don’t care if you apply that to healthcare or gun ownership; if someone else has to do the thing in order for me to exercise it, I don’t have a right. 

But where it differs from something like healthcare is in the fact that the right to keep and bear arms is expressly protected by the Second Amendment. There’s no right to free check-ups or shots for the STD you got screwing around with the smelliest people possible. That’s not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution at all.

While the courts or the legislature should have fixed this years ago, they have a great opportunity to do so now.

We’ll have to see if some of the so-called Republicans in the House will actually help with it this time around, or whether they’ll block it like they have every other time it’s come up since Parkland.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and most Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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