Executive Summary
- HB 757 unanimously cleared the House Judiciary Committee after removing “campus carry” language.
- The bill mandates annual security assessments and functional door locks for all instructional spaces.
- The legislation expands the state’s guardian program to the university level to allow vetted volunteers to carry concealed weapons.
- Provisions were influenced by the April shooting at Florida State University which highlighted infrastructure vulnerabilities.
The Florida House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a revised school safety measure on Tuesday, advancing House Bill 757 only after language permitting faculty to carry firearms on university campuses was stripped from the legislation.
The amended bill, sponsored by Republican Representative Michelle Salzman, pivots away from the controversial proposal to allow professors and teaching assistants to openly carry guns, a provision that remains in the Senate companion version. Instead, the legislation focuses on infrastructure hardening, uniform threat assessment protocols, and the expansion of the state’s guardian program to higher education institutions.
“In the whole United States, there is not a single state that has a uniform response, a uniform requirement for mental health, or stress, or how to engage, or how to spot or see that his could be happening on campus at that moment,” Rep. Salzman stated during the committee hearing.
According to legislative records, the bill was formulated following the April shooting at Florida State University (FSU) which left two dead and five wounded. Investigations in the aftermath of the attack revealed that certain classroom doors at the university could not be locked from the inside. Rep. Salzman, who was enrolled as a master’s student at FSU during the incident, noted that the bill mandates public institutions to conduct annual security assessments and requires locks on all instructional spaces.
Key provisions of HB 757 include making the discharge of a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school a second-degree felony and requiring the transfer of student threat assessment reports from K-12 schools to colleges upon enrollment. The bill also expands the “guardian program” to the university level, authorizing vetted volunteers to carry concealed weapons on campus, and promotes the use of mobile suspicious activity reporting tools such as FortifyFL.
Legislative Outlook
The removal of the campus carry provision marks a significant divergence from the Senate version of the legislation, sponsored by Senator Don Gaetz, which has yet to be scheduled for a hearing. This strategic adjustment by the House Judiciary Committee suggests a prioritization of bipartisan consensus on structural safety standards over more polarizing firearm policies. As the bill moves forward, the reconciliation between the House’s infrastructure-focused approach and the Senate’s potential retention of arming faculty will be a critical factor in the legislation’s final passage.
