Florida Senate Committee Votes Down Campus Carry Bill

There are several pro-2A bills that are still making progress in the Florida legislature, including an effort to repeal the prohibition on gun sales to adults under the age of 21 that should soon come up for a vote on the House floor. 

But not every good bill is gaining ground this session, and on Tuesday, one measure was killed outright despite Republicans having a majority of seats on the committee in question. 

The final vote on Sen. Randy Fine’s SB 814 was 4 “nays” to 3 “ayes” in Tuesday’s Senate Criminal Justice Committee. The failure of a Republican bill in committee is exceedingly rare in the Florida Legislature, which enjoys a conservative supermajority. 

The deciding “no” vote was another Republican, Sen. Ileana Garcia. Republican Senators Jennifer Bradley and Corey Simon were absent during the vote, allowing the three Democrats and Garcia to officially kill the bill. 

It was Fine’s final bill as a state lawmaker before he resigns his seat to pursue a congressional run.

If it had advanced, it would’ve allowed college students to carry their firearms on campus and in dorms. It would’ve also allowed the lawful possession—but not the storage—of guns in all pre-school through twelfth grade schools, school buses, and at bus stops. Fine filed it in response to the massive uptick in antisemitic incidents on college campuses following Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

“What I saw in colleges around the country was not that students were held hostage…it’s that the terrorists who did it to those students were protected by the universities,” Fine said in committee, minutes before his bill was killed. He referred to the thousands of anti-Israel protests on college campuses. One culminated in protesters at UCLA barring Jewish students from entering campus, and another in an assault on a student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Now, the vast majority of those protests never resulted in any attack that would have justified a response with lethal force, but that doesn’t mean that these incidents won’t escalate in the future. 

Even beyond the specific targeting of Jewish students on campus, however, there’s a common sense argument in favor of Fine’s bill: the same folks who would be allowed to carry on campus are already bearing arms in self-defense in off-campus settings. Why do Garcia and the three Democrats who voted down SB 814 believe these individuals are responsible enough to carry in a grocery store or gas station, but not in a campus library or a dorm room? 

Even if lawmakers were hesitant about changing the status quo and empowering parents to protect their kids with a firearm at a bus stop, SB 814 could have been amended without being killed outright. But as the Floridian Press notes, even if SB 814 had passed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee it wasn’t likely to become law this session. 

Fine’s measure had no companion bill in the House, and he had not secured a sponsor for his bill before his scheduled departure on March 31—meaning the bill would not have become law anyway. Despite this, it is highly unusual for Republicans to vote down a same-party member’s bill, especially one expanding gun rights.

But Fine, who’s publicly feuded with Gov. Ron DeSantis in the past, is known to clash with other lawmakers, including Republicans. Earlier in the session, Sen. Garcia told The Floridian that she “did not care” for Fine. 

On Tuesday, she killed his bill.

It sounds like the untimely demise of the bill wasn’t entirely based on practical or philosophical concerns. It’s sad to think that a personality conflict is standing in the way of students and staff being able to protect themselves on a college or university campus, but despite the legislature’s Republican supermajority, it’s clear that not every GOP member of the House and Senate are on the same page… or willing to set aside their personal issues in order to advance the cause of liberty and personal safety.