Competing gun related bills will largely define the 2024 Florida legislative session. STOCK PHOTO

MIAMI – Just when Florida Democrats attempt to repeal firearm laws to curb gun violence and accidental shootings, Republicans continue their efforts to loosen gun laws during the 2024 Legislative Session in Tallahassee.

Both parties are clashing over a series of gun law bills including allowing people to openly carry firearms in Florida, changing the waiting period to purchase handguns, lowering the age to purchase rifles from 21 back to 18, and repealing the controversial Stand Your Ground Law.

The rifle purchase law was approved following the 2018 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting massacre that killed 17 students and teachers and injured another 17.

Last year, the Republican-controlled Legislature imposed a law that would allow people to purchase handguns without a permit and background check and in 2024 more bills are on the horizon to “support” Second Amendment rights.

Other bills include allowing lawmakers to carry concealed firearms to legislative meetings and in the state Capitol complex, extending background checks to ammunition filed by Boca Raton Democrat Sen. Tina Polsky and Navarre Republican state Rep. Joel Rudman’s bill to impose a deadline on law enforcement to complete the background investigation on the purchase of firearms.

On the first day of the session, Rudman said 97 percent of checks were completed within three days in 2017 before the new law was enacted.

“I’m trying to restore some sanity to the process,” said Rudman, who called his bill a common sense solution to the delays Floridians experience when buying a gun. “We’ve got to set what we call a shot clock on the background checks."

Polsky said since 2019, she has filed several bills regulating how and who can sell firearms and bullets, and requiring gun owners to store their firemars in a safe place where children cannot reach them.

Her bills failed as Republicans voted them down, calling them senseless laws.

"You want to talk about common sense?" Polsky said. "Common sense is you own a deadly instrument, and you need to take responsibility like you do with a car.

Second Amendment advocates praised the proposed bills to loosen gun restrictions including Riverview Republican state Rep. Mike Beltran’s bill for open carry, saying it is long overdue.

Previous attempts to make Florida an open carry state failed after several mass shootings and Florida sheriffs and law enforcement associations publicly campaigned against it.

If Beltran’s bill passes, Florida will become the 39th open carry state.

Sen. Shervin Jones, a Democrat from West Park, has filed a bill in another attempt to repeal Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground Law, which gained national attention in 2012 when George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Travyon Martin claiming self-defense.

Jones filed SB 96 which is designed to remove statutory language allowing someone “to stand his or her ground” and replaces it with a duty to retreat from confrontation “if the person knows that he or she can, with complete safety, avoid the necessity of using deadly force.”

Under the current law, a person can use deadly force if an individual feels his or her life is threatened, without a duty to retreat.

Jones said the law has been linked to an increase in gun violence.

He said gun owners can use the Stand Your Ground Law to settle disputes and avert prosecution.

"It would certainly reduce the number of individuals dying from gun violence," Jones said of his proposal.

Democratic Reps. Joe Casello and Dan Daley are co-sponsoring a bill (HB 1087) that would require gun owners to store firearms and ammunition in secured places in the vehicles to increase responsibility.

Casello and Daley are proposing acceptable locations to store firearms that would be locked trunks and containers while excluding easily accessible areas like vehicle beds or compartments with windows.

“This bill represents a practical step toward increasing personal responsibility," Cassello said. "It’s about ensuring that firearms are securely stored in vehicles, balancing personal rights with community safety."