Florida GOP Gun Bill Seeks to Allow Open Carry on College Campuses

Florida Republicans have introduced a new bill in the state Senate that would expand a controversial gun program and allow open carry for some students and faculty on college and university campuses across the state.

Senate Bill 896, sponsored by state Sen. Don Gaetz (R), is currently being considered for advancement within multiple committees in the Florida Senate. The bill would allow certain employees, faculty, and students to openly carry their personal firearms on campus grounds.

The bill would make it a felony to discharge a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school during school hours or when an activity at a school is taking place. The legislation would also authorize colleges and universities “to participate in the school guardian program.”

That program was established by the Republican-led state legislature following the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It allows school districts to request their respective sheriff’s office to train school employees — including teachers, faculty, and other support staff — to become armed “guardians,” to carry their weapons anywhere on school grounds. Schools are also authorized to enlist community members to become guardians, or to hire private security guards for that purpose.

Critics lambasted the legislation at the time as unnecessarily enabling more guns on school grounds, rather than addressing the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. Notably, armed guards at schools rarely stop mass shootings, research has shown, and there are numerous examples of guns being mishandled by authorized individuals on school grounds.

Still, Gaetz attempted to justify the bill by citing a mass shooting at Florida State University earlier this year, insinuating that his proposal could have prevented the massacre from taking place.

“We’re living in a world where our institutions are being threatened,” Gaetz said in a recent interview. “I’m sorry that I’m having to do this, but it just seems as though places in our society that we thought were safe, even sacrosanct, are now becoming targets.”

The comment from the state senator seems to reference two separate talking points from pro-gun Republicans: that more guns make society safer or less prone to violent crime; and that gun-free zones are inherently dangerous.

Both talking points have been contradicted by studies examining such claims.

Speaking to Miami’s WPLG in September about proposals like Gaetz’s, Florida State University student Madalyn Propst, who was on campus during the April shooting, expressed opposition to the idea.

“It will solve nothing,” Propst said. “If there had been multiple students that were armed during the shooting back in April, then I wouldn’t have been able to run and turn a corner and get away. I would have run and tried to get away and then met with another scared student with a firearm who doesn’t know who’s the actual perpetrator.”