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Florida looks to expand ‘guardian’ program after FSU, Brown shootings
Florida looks to expand ‘guardian’ program after FSU, Brown shootings
Updated Dec. 15, 2025, 6:26 p.m. ET
- Florida lawmakers have filed legislation to allow trained employees to carry firearms on college campuses.
- The proposed bills would expand the “guardian” program, currently in K-12 schools, to state colleges and universities.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis’s budget proposal includes funding for school safety, including the guardian program expansion.
On Dec. 12 a pair of Florida lawmakers filed legislation to allow trained employees to carry firearms on college campuses.
The next day someone killed two people and injured nine others at Brown University in Rhode Island.
The incident was just the latest mass shooting at an American college. State lawmakers were in session in the Capitol last April when a gunman killed two people and injured five others at Florida State University, just blocks away.
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who filed SB 896, said he hopes his bill and another bill he filed regarding security at houses of worship are never needed, but the frequency of mass shootings prompted him to act.
“Unfortunately those bills are necessary for the same reason and that’s because places in our society that should be the safest – educational institutions and houses of worship – are now places that are being targeted by terrible, crazy, evil people,” Gaetz said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has school safety in mind as well.
On Dec. 10 he unveiled a budget proposal that included hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade safety measures at K-12 schools, colleges and universities.
His plan includes $20 million to install locks on classroom doors at universities and an increase of $6 million to expand the “guardian” program that allows trained employees at K-12 schools to carry firearms on campus, to colleges and universities.
“This funding for school safety will ensure that students continue to have the resources needed to maintain safe and secure campuses statewide,” Education Commissioner Anastasios “Stasi” Kamoutsas said as DeSantis revealed his spending suggestions.
The expansion of the guardian program is one part of the Gaetz’s bill and a similar bill (HB 757) filed by Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Pensacola. It would allow state colleges and universities to opt in to the program and receive training and funding.
Gaetz said he drafted the measure in coordination with State University System and State College System leaders, but was unsure how many institutions would sign up for the guardian program.
Other parts of the bill require schools to adopt plans to respond to a mass shooting, or an “active assailant,” including working with local police to develop a family reunification plan to unite students and workers with their families after a shooting. Training for faculty to identify and deal with students having mental health issues, and threat assessment management teams will be required as well.
Gaetz said schools should also be required to ensure classroom doors have functioning locks, an issue that arose during the FSU shooting.
“That section of the bill was inspired by lessons that were learned when locks weren’t available when they should’ve been, or when they didn’t work and they should’ve worked,” Gaetz said.
The most controversial part of the bill, though, will likely be the guardian program expansion.
The program was first passed in 2018 after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County, that left 17 dead, including 14 students. It was one piece of a larger school safety and gun control bill that raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21.
Many Democrats voted for the bill because of the gun control measures but didn’t like the provision allowing guns in public schools, arguing it would increase – not lessen – the chances of another mass shooting.
In the years after the Parkland shooting, Democratic lawmakers have tried to impose more restrictions on gun and ammunition purchases, while Republicans have pushed to ease firearm rules and regulations.
Republicans have a supermajority in the Legislature, and succeeded in 2023 in passing a bill allowing the concealed carrying of a gun without a license. Efforts to repeal the 21-age threshold to buy a rifle and lower it back to 18 have advanced in the House but failed in the Senate.
Earlier this year, the measure passed the House and the chamber has advanced a similar bill (HB 133) to a floor vote ahead of the Jan. 13 start of the next regular legislative session.
“The ability to purchase and utilize a firearm is your constitutional right, and reinstating those rights is the right thing to do for Floridians,” said Salzman, who filed the 2025 version of the bill. “We must stop infringing on the constitutional rights of law-abiding adults who are old enough to serve in our military and make other significant life decisions.”
Gun advocates, though, got a boost when an appellate court earlier this year declared Florida’s ban on openly carrying a gun in public to be unconstitutional. Attorney General James Uthmeier later said the ruling applies statewide.
Meanwhile, Democratic gun control bills haven’t received a hearing.
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.
