The Florida Home Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 7 on December 2, 2025, to advance laws that might restore the suitable of younger adults to buy rifles and shotguns. This marked the fourth consecutive 12 months Republicans have tried to right what gun rights advocates view as a constitutional infringement dedicated within the panic following the Parkland taking pictures.
Home Invoice 133, sponsored by Home Majority Chief Tyler Sirois, would decrease the minimal age for buying lengthy weapons from 21 again to 18 years outdated. The measure now heads to the complete Home for consideration when the 2026 legislative session begins on January 13, having cleared its ultimate committee hurdle.
The invoice instantly challenges a key provision of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College Public Security Act, the sweeping gun management bundle Florida Republicans handed in 2018 after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 folks on the Parkland highschool. That laws raised the minimal firearm buy age to 21 and created pink flag legal guidelines empowering authorities to confiscate weapons from people deemed harmful. Violations of the age restriction carry penalties of as much as 5 years imprisonment and $5,000 in fines.
For gun rights organizations like Florida Gun Rights, this laws represents a possibility to roll again what they characterize as a betrayal of constitutional rules throughout a second of political weak point.
“This removes the navy age buy ban of lengthy weapons that got here from the egregious Parkland invoice in 2018,” Florida Gun Rights wrote following the committee vote. “Whereas this can be a victory, the Senate has refused to take it up for years. The Senate in Tallahassee is treating the 2nd Modification as a 2nd class proper.”
Home Judiciary Committee voted 13-7 in favor HB 133.
This removes the navy age buy ban of lengthy weapons that got here from the egregious Parkland invoice in 2018.
Whereas this can be a victory, the Senate has refused to take it up for years. The Senate in Tallahassee is treating the…
— Florida Gun Rights (@FLGunRights) December 2, 2025
The present legislation creates what supporters of HB 133 view as an apparent constitutional inequity. Adults aged 18 to twenty can vote, serve within the navy, signal contracts, and legally possess firearms if gifted to them. They merely can’t buy those self same firearms themselves.
State Rep. Jessica Baker highlighted this contradiction throughout committee deliberations. “Proper now, in Florida, a 19 12 months outdated can legally personal an extended gun if somebody provides it to them, however they’ll’t purchase one themselves,” she famous.
HB 133 would restore buying rights for rifles and shotguns to adults on this age group, although federal legislation would nonetheless require consumers to be 21 to buy handguns from licensed sellers. The invoice would additionally enable 18 12 months olds to buy pistols from non-public sellers, since present state legislation prohibits any firearm buy for these beneath 21.
This marks the fourth consecutive 12 months the Florida Home has superior such laws. The chamber handed related measures in 2023, 2024, and throughout the 2025 session. Every time, the Senate has refused to take up the payments.
The committee vote broke nearly solely alongside occasion traces, with Rep. Hillary Cassel, whose district is close to the Parkland neighborhood, being the one Republican to vote towards the measure.
The Senate stays the first impediment to restoring these rights. Senate President Ben Albritton has not publicly acknowledged his place on the difficulty, however the invoice should cross via the Guidelines Committee, the place Chairwoman Kathleen Passidomo has acknowledged she won’t repeal the 2018 laws. No companion Senate invoice has been filed for the 2026 session.
The persistence of Home Republicans in advancing this laws displays a recognition that the 2018 response to Parkland represented a departure from core rules. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College Public Security Act handed throughout a interval of intense political strain, when Republicans deserted their conventional protection of Second Modification rights in favor of restrictions that punish law-abiding younger adults for the actions of a felony.
The constitutional case for HB 133 rests on a simple precept. The Second Modification doesn’t comprise an age restriction past the final authorized definition of maturity. If 18-year-olds are adults for functions of voting, navy service, and felony prosecution, they’re adults for functions of exercising their proper to maintain and bear arms.
The Senate’s continued refusal to even vote on this laws means that some Florida Republicans stay extra involved with avoiding controversy than with defending constitutional rights. This reluctance to right a mistake made throughout a second of panic reveals a regarding willingness to deal with the Second Modification as by some means subordinate to different constitutional protections.
For younger adults at the moment denied their rights, the scenario creates actual sensible issues. An 18-year-old dwelling alone can’t buy a shotgun for residence protection. A 19-year-old can’t purchase a rifle for searching. A 20-year-old navy service member residence on depart can’t buy the identical firearms they might be educated to make use of in service to their nation.
The Home has achieved its job. The query now could be whether or not the Senate will discover the resolve to affix them in correcting the constitutional error of 2018, or whether or not political calculation will proceed to override precept for an additional 12 months.
About José Niño
José Niño is a contract author based mostly in Charlotte, North Carolina. You’ll be able to contact him by way of Fb and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack e-newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
