Flowers, candles, and notes decorated the area around the Student Union at Florida State University days after two were killed and six were injured by a gunman on April 17, 2025. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
Less than a year after a gunman opened fire on Florida State University’s campus, killing two and injuring more, the Florida House has passed a bill intended to prevent another shooting.
Members voted 83-25 on HB 757, Rep. Michelle Salzman’s bill that she says she traveled to state to formulate following the FSU shooting, which happened as lawmakers were present at the Capitol just blocks away from campus.
“It was a tough time. It was a scary time. School was shut down for about a week. We came back and it was a different place. But the question was, what are we going to do? What’s next? How many times is this going to happen before we make it a safer place,” Salzman, a Republican from Escambia County, said during a Wednesday evening floor debate.
Salzman was a student at FSU at the time of the shooting, working toward her master’s degree.
“While law enforcement responded quickly, that incident exposed gaps in communication, coordination, preparedness, and protection,” Salzman said.
The bill would extend Florida’s School Guardian Program to public colleges and universities, expanding the program lawmakers created for K-12 schools following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Shooting in Parkland, when 17 people were killed.
The Guardian Program allows employees and faculty members who undergo training to carry guns at schools. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission concluded the “best way” to combat campus violence is “to ensure highly trained personnel are in place to respond immediately in the event of a school shooting.”
The training for becoming a Guardian follows “rigorous standards,” Salzman said, and that the bill is about “Prevention. Prevention. Prevention.” Those guardians carrying guns would have to be appointed by their institution’s president.
The votes in opposition were all from Democrats.
“I just think it’s very important that we let the people who are teaching, teach. Let them fully focus on teaching, not get distracted from that. And if we actually care about security, we’re going to hire people who their only job is security,” Democratic Pro Tempore Christine Hunschofsky said in introducing an ultimately failed amendment to exclude professors from carrying guns. Hunschofsky was mayor of Parkland at the time of the 2018 shooting.
The bill requires universities to conduct threat assessments and create threat management teams. It directs training for faculty to identify and respond to behavioral mental health warning signs and to enhance communication about dual-enrolled students’ discipline records between K-12 schools and colleges.
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Senate
On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed that chamber’s companion bill, preparing it for a floor vote, although it’s not scheduled for one yet.
“I fundamentally don’t believe that adding more guns to the equation on college campuses is what will make us safer,” Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, said before voting against the bill in committee.
“Today, this bill is not about allowing students to be guardians, but next session we probably will be dealing with a bill that makes students eligible to be guardians,” Smith said, adding that the bill could signal a move toward “a full-out campus carry.”
Bills to permit campus carry have been introduced but not passed in previous sessions.
In K-12 schools, guardians are either employees who volunteer in addition to regular duties or those hired for that specific purpose. The training takes 144 hours, almost all to handle firearms. Guardians must pass drug tests and psychological evaluations.
Sen. Ralph Massullo, a Republican from Lecanto, supported the measure.
“There was some testimony about it taking two minutes for people to respond to the shooting at FSU, and we heard from one of the survivors of that shooting. But what we didn’t hear from, not necessarily from that shooting but from others, are the people that didn’t survive. This bill will promote more survival, and I’m 100% for it,” Massullo said.
During the Senate committee meeting Tuesday, Charles McMartin, a new professor at FSU, said it was the third shooting he’s experienced. First in Colorado, second at University of Arizona, and third last year, when he was visiting FSU’s campus and searching for housing before moving to Tallahassee for his new job.
“I have felt gun violence on campus, I have feared for my life, and I can tell you that allowing faculty and staff to arm themselves will not make campuses safer,” McMartin said. “Since the FSU shooting, despite the proactive measures of the university, my students and colleagues have struggled to feel secure. Introducing more guns into these environments increases the risk of accidental shootings, misidentification, and escalation, not safety.”
Two people dead, six injured, suspect in custody after FSU shooting
The bill would create a second-degree felony for people who discharge a firearm within 1,000 feet of a campus, although it provides exceptions.
Fifty-three counties participate in the Guardian Program, according to the Florida Department of Education, and in 2023 it was expanded to include private K-12 schools.
“I’m really concerned that — you know, the guardian program has training but it’s nothing like the training police officers have. We have seen what happens with our ICE officers when there’s not a lot of training and the wrong kind of people sign up to be guardians. It’s a dangerous situation,” Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat from Boca Raton, said, floating the question of which faculty members might offer to be a guardian. “Could it be someone who might be a little trigger happy?”
The bill is supported by the Board of Governors of the State University System.
“After 15 years in the Legislature, I can tell you that gun laws only apply to the good guys, bad guys don’t care. If the bad guys cared about the law, there would be no school shootings, because its already illegal to shoot someone. This law is for the good guys. We are reminded constantly in this world, unfortunately, that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Sen. Jason Brodeur, a Republican from Sanford, said.
The Senate committee passed the bill 11-6 with five Democrats and one Republican, Sen. Ileana Garcia from Miami, voting no.
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Parkland perspective
Following the Parkland shooting, which occurred while legislators were in Tallahassee, all eyes were on the Capitol to make changes. Since then, family members of those killed have advocated for changes, although in different ways.
The Guardian Program is named after Chris Hixon, Aaron Feis, and Scott Beigel, school employees who acted to save lives in the seconds after the gunman started firing in Parkland and were killed while doing so.
The Phoenix spoke to Hixon’s son, Tom, before the House floor vote.
The idea of arming teachers, Tom Hixon said, “instead of investing into other school-safety measures, hardened schools that prevent a shooter from accessing the campus in the first place, just seems like a wild thought to me, from both my military background and a common-sense background.”
Tom Hixon sits on Everytown Veteran Advisory Council. That organization advocates for intervention strategies to prevent gun violence and opposes arming teachers.
Chris Hixon served in the Navy reserve and had received training on responses to active shooters in that position.
“He had a lot of law enforcement training, a lot of active-shooter scenario training, and even though he was not armed that day, he ran in to help because that’s the training he had,” Tom Hixon said of his dad.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if [the program] had my dad’s name on it. I don’t agree with it. He probably wouldn’t agree with it, even though he would probably personally love the idea of being able to carry on campus — just because of his background, his experience, he knew he would have been able to do good with it. But, again, he had the years of training to do so and not just what the bare minimum is for the Guardian program,” Tom Hixon said.
“It just opens up so much more liability, potential scenarios for things to go wrong on a college campus because the layout is vastly different than a K-12 campus,” Hixon said, adding that he “wholeheartedly disagree[s] with the idea of this bill with how it’s currently written.”
Hixon said he wants the bill to include more language regarding weapon storage, stipulations on which weapons faculty might carry, and stronger communication guidelines for guardians. He called for guardians to be paid additional compensation for participating.
Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed during the Parkland shooting, has advocated for change since that day, too.
“The average duration of an active shooter incident in a school is three to five minutes. The average law enforcement response time after a 911 call is seven to 10 minutes. The outcome — who lives and who dies — is almost entirely determined before the first patrol car arrives,” Petty, who is also chair of the state Board of Education, wrote in his blog Tuesday.
“I know this more personally than I’d ever want to. The shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas killed 17 people in approximately six minutes. By the time law enforcement rallied, the math had already done its terrible work. This is not a criticism of law enforcement. With few exceptions (a big exception was former Deputy Scot Peterson, who hid behind a cement barrier for 48 minutes during the Parkland attack), these men and women respond as fast as physics allows. It is simply a recognition that geography creates a window — and when there is no trained response already on site, that window is lethal,” Petty wrote.
“And here is what makes the Guardian Program particularly effective as a deterrent: the attacker doesn’t know who they are. You can plan around an [school resource officer] you can see. You cannot plan around an assistant principal or a coach whose training is not publicly disclosed. That uncertainty is itself a weapon — and we know it works, because would-be attackers have said so. Interviewed subjects have cited the unknown presence of armed staff as a reason they reconsidered,” Petty wrote.
A group of FSU students marched to the Capitol last year, asking for change from lawmakers.
“After the tragedy at FSU last April, we expected our lawmakers to do something to ensure guns stay out of our classrooms. Instead, they’ve chosen to flood our campuses with even more guns, effectively telling us that our safety is our own problem. We are a generation of survivors who are tired of being ignored, and we will be the ones to vote for a future where our lives matter more than the gun lobby’s agenda,” De’jah Charles, a volunteer with the Florida A&M University chapter of Students Demand Action, said in a news release following the Senate committee vote.