Baby Steps

Florida Senate Passes Gun-Control Legislation

Bans bump stocks and under 21s from buying guns.

Florida’s Republican-controlled Senate has passed, by a narrow 20-18 vote, legislation that will ban people under age 21 from buying guns, three weeks after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting. The bill will also require a three-day waiting period for most gun purchases, and would ban the sale or possession of bump-stock devices. The bill, which must now be approved by the state’s House of Representatives, includes a $67 million, voluntary opt-in “school marshal” program that would let school districts allow some staff members to carry concealed weapons on campus. Sen. Lauren Book, who represents a district that includes the Parkland campus, said that while the bill did not go far enough, it was “an opportunity to get something done that inches us closer to the place I believe we should be as a state.” Meanwhile, student survivor Anthony Borges, who was shot five times in the attack, has become the first person to formally notify the county of his intent to sue.