Bill Overturning Age Restrictions in Florida Stalls After FSU Shooting

The FSU shooting was going to have at least some degree of impact on the Florida legislative process. It always does, even if it’s just a renewal of the gun debate.

Not all that long ago, the Parkland shooting led to major changes to the state’s gun laws. One of the bills passed in the wake of that incident was a law that raised the age to buy long guns to 21. This has been a major problem for gun rights advocates in the Sunshine State, but this year represented the best chance so far of seeing the limit repealed.

But now, following the FSU shooting, it seems that it’s just not going to happen.

Days after a mass shooting at nearby Florida State University, the state Senate appears poised to scuttle a controversial proposal that would allow people under age 21 to buy rifles and other long guns.

Senate Rules Chairwoman Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said Monday her committee won’t take up a House measure (HB 759) that would lower the minimum age to 18.

Passidomo said the decision against taking up the House bill was made before the shooting Thursday at Florida State University that killed two people and injured six others. The alleged gunman, the stepson of a Leon County Sheriff’s deputy, was also shot as police officers quickly responded to the scene.

After a 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people, the Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott approved a number of changes, including increasing the minimum age for long-gun purchases to 21. Federal law has long set the minimum age at 21 for handgun purchases.

“I haven’t changed my position in how many years,” Passidomo, a former Senate president, said. “I’ve been clear from day one that I’m not going to replace Parkland. I was there.”

Passidomo can say FSU played no role at all, but I’m never going to be convinced of that. If nothing else, it makes it easier for her to push away any pressure for her committee to take up the bill.

I can’t say it’s surprising, though. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolute BS, but it’s just not shocking that Passidomo won’t take it up.

The truth is that Florida has a real problem. See, when it became clear that Democrats weren’t going to win elections anymore, a lot of them just switched jerseys and pretended they were Republicans. They never actually changed their views in any appreciable way.

And that process went on for a long time.

Then, couple that with the chucklenugget Republicans who seem to think that being the party of freedom means restricting guns anyway, and you’ve got a state that has what should be a pro-gun supermajority that can’t seem to pass substantive gun rights legislation to save their collective lives.

So, you get restrictions that some lawmakers refuse to remove, who then use every other tragedy as if it’s somehow evidence that they need these laws–never mind that it’s proof the freaking laws didn’t do a damn thing, mind you–and you end up with a recipe for inactivity in a state that has lawmakers literally calling it the freest state in the nation.

It’s absurd, and I’m not the only one who thinks it is.

📣 FLORIDA GOP—GROW A SPINE!

We gave Republicans a SUPERMAJORITY, & they’re governing like DEMOCRATS!

Other red states are RESTORING 2A rights for 18+ adults!

Meanwhile, FL’s GOP blocks repeal efforts of the Under-21 Purchase Ban for the THIRD YEAR IN A ROW.

📞 850-487-5027 pic.twitter.com/UN3sWiiSZG

— Luis Valdes (@RealFLGunLobby) April 22, 2025

To our Floridian readers, understand this: only you can really do anything. You’re the voters on the ground. You have to vote these people out and vote in pro-gun lawmakers. You need to destroy the careers of these people who care so little about the right to keep and bear arms.

You live in the most restrictive pro-gun state in the country. For all the talk of freedom by some of your lawmakers, you’re not. If legal adults cannot buy firearms of any kind, you’re not free. It’s just that simple.

But an entire nation has your back if you can rally enough support to do something about that.