TALLAHASSEE — Restrictions on backyard shooting ranges have been revived in the Florida Legislature, weeks after they appeared to be dead for this spring’s session.
Meanwhile, two other gun-related measures have been stymied, and look like a bust for the year, their sponsor, Rep. Greg Steube admitted last week.
The legislation that would ban backyard shooting ranges in cities and neighborhoods had appeared to be doomed in late March, when a bill sponsored by state Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, was rejected at its first committee stop in the Florida House.
Don and Belle Blevins live on a three-acre lot in the semi-rural Estates neighborhood of North Port. Because state law does not prohibit it, their neighbors freely shoot guns. Shown are shells that Don Blevins said he picked up one day in about 15 minutes on property adjoining his lot. STAFF PHOTO / CHRISTI WOMACK
Rouson’s bill, responding to complaints about hastily erected shooting ranges and errant bullets in neighborhoods around the state, would have made it a misdemeanor to fire a gun on a residential property in many cases.
Though supported by several local governments in Florida, including the cities of North Port and St. Petersburg, the influential National Rifle Association opposed the measure and it failed.
But similar language has quietly appeared on an amendment to an unrelated Senate bill dealing with consumer licensing.
That measure, sponsored by Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, the Senate president pro tempore, appears headed for passage.
Rouson said he was surprised when he saw the amendment and didn’t take offense out of pride of authorship.
“It’s not about ego. It’s all about the end result. And the end result is public safety,” Rouson said.
The NRA is not opposing the measure, according to Florida NRA leader Marion Hammer, who said she agreed with it. The amendment spares large rural properties, specifically applying to more dense neighborhoods with one or more homes per acre.
“It would be extremely difficult for anybody to convince another person that it would be safe to shoot in that range,” Hammer said.
The backyard shooting has been an issue in the North Port Estates neighborhood in Sarasota County’s largest municipality, where local officials said a 2011 state law precluded them from responding to complaints.
In one case last summer, an errant shot passed through trees before smashing through a lanai window in a home where a grandmother was caring for 2- and 4-year-old girls while their parents, a doctor and a businessman, were at work. No one was hurt, but residents expressed fear about what could happen.
On the whole, proponents of concealed-carry have not gotten everything they wanted as the legislative session moves into its final scheduled two weeks. A budget stalemate is expected to lead to overtime or a special session.
But the NRA has not been without victories. The Senate passed a bill, SB 290, that would allow legal gun owners to carry their guns without concealed-weapons licenses during the first 48 hours of an emergency evacuation. A House version is expected to pass easily.
Other measures, especially concerning concealed-carry on college campuses, will likely be back in another session, Hammer said, despite setbacks this year.
“It’ll pass sooner or later,” Hammer said.
The college campus bill was one of two gun bills sponsored by Steube, R-Sarasota, that ran into turbulence this spring.
SB 176 remains stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where key Senate leaders seemed determined to keep it bottled up. Senate Judiciary Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said last week that he didn’t intend to have it put on the committee agenda.
“I’ve polled the members of the Senate, and there doesn’t seem to be too much support for that bill,” he said.
Another would have allowed school superintendents to tap employees or volunteers to carry concealed weapons on school property, but it was effectively killed by a committee last Wednesday.
Once again, Steube succeeded in pushing concealed-carry legislation through House committees only to fall short in the Senate, as happened last year. On Thursday, he said there seemed little chance of moving them this session.
“Those bills are dead in the Senate, it appears,” Steube said.
Technically, there remains an outside chance of bringing the bills over for a full Senate vote after passing them in the House. “I would certainly like to have the debate on the floor,” Steube said.
But since that would most likely a futile effort, Steube said he would not ask lawmakers to spend time on the bills when the Legislature already may not finish on time.
The bill for concealed-carry in schools, SB 180, appeared to have a second chance on Wednesday when the Senate Education PreK-12 Committee scheduled it again after having setting it aside in an earlier meeting.
But once again, the committee declined to vote on it. The committee chairman, John Legg, R-Lutz, said it was “temporarily postponed” out of respect for the Senate sponsor, Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker.
“It did not have the votes in this committee,” Legg said.
