Twenty eight students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland, Florida, and Florida State University (FSU) demanded Monday that Governor Ron DeSantis oppose efforts to lower the state’s minimum age to purchase a firearm after another deadly shooting last week.
The letter sent Monday calls for DeSantis to reject attempts in Florida to lower its minimum age to purchase a firearm from 21 to 18, like House Bill 759, which passed overwhelmingly 78-34 in the house on March 26 and now sits with the state’s senate.
A 20-year-old student at FSU opened fire on Thursday, killing two and injuring six people. Many of the students who signed the letter attended both MSD and FSU. Florida’s minimum age to purchase a firearm was raised in 2018, in the wake of the shooting in Parkland earlier that same year that left 14 students and three staff members dead.
“What we went through, we made it our mission to ensure this could never happen again,” said Logan Rubenstein in the letter. Rubenstein is a former MSD and current FSU student.
The letter also called on DeSantis to publicly oppose Senate Bill 814 which would allow people to carry firearms on college campuses in Florida.
“If either of these bills reach your desk, you must commit to a veto,” the students wrote in the letter. “Anything less is a betrayal of those gunned down in Parkland and at FSU, and of all of us who have known the fear of thinking we might die at school.”
DeSantis has previously signed pro-gun legislation in the state into law, including a bill in April 2023 that allowed Florida citizens who are legally entitled to own guns to be able to carry them in most public places without a special permit. Following its enactment, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that guns were the leading cause of death for children and teens in the country. The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions published a similar report in September 2024, finding that firearms remain the leading cause of death for children and teens.
State laws restricting young adults at the age of 18 to 20 to possess firearms have been found unconstitutional consistently. On April 21, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appellate decision holding Minnesota age restrictions on handgun possession unconstitutional. In January, two different appellate courts have also struck down a federal statute and a Pennsylvania law that impose age restrictions on firearms.
