Florida Republican Files Bill Legalizing Bump Stocks for Semiautomatic Rifles

A Florida Republican has filed a bill to repeal the state's ban on bump stocks, tools that let certain firearms shoot like machine guns, eight months after the Supreme Court struck down a federal version of the ban.

State Rep. Toby Overdorf, a pro-gun advocate and member of the National Rifle Association, introduced HB 6013 last week to reverse Florida's ban on bump stocks, which were outlawed after the deadly Parkland school shooting in 2018.

Though Overdorf's office has yet to respond to a request for comment from The Floridian, he told Florida Politics his bill is designed to align Florida's laws with federal law.

"The state law does not currently comply with federal law,” he said. “I would like for state law to comply with federal law.”

Overdorf's repeal push comes eight months after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the federal ban on bump stocks, implemented during the Trump administration in 2019, enabled the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to overstep its authority in treating bump stocks as machine guns.

Trump signed off on the ban after a Las Vegas shooter used a bump-stock-equipped rifle to fire off over 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes at a country music festival in 2017, killing 60 and injuring hundreds more. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Bump stocks, also known as bump-fire stocks, were banned by the Florida Legislature one month after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 people were killed by an 18-year-old gunman. Though the shooter, who carried out the murders on Valentine's Day in 2018, did not use a bump stock, the tragedy sparked broad gun reform statewide.

Now, Overdorf, who ran on a platform to repeal the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act, wants Florida to comply with federal law. Overdorf earned an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association in 2022 and boasted a 92% grade from the pro-gun organization in October.

A founding member of the South Florida Shooting Club, Overdorf promised to overturn the sweeping Douglas Act five months after it passed. Its provisions included banning bump stocks, raising the gun-buying age to 21, and instituting red flag laws which allowed law enforcement to temporarily confiscate the guns of someone deemed dangerous by a court.

In 2023, he co-sponsored legislation to return the gun-buying age to 18—what it was before the Parkland shooting. The bill failed before reaching the floor.

PBS reported that there were about 520,000 bump stocks in circulation when the federal ban went into effect in 2019. The ban demanded owners surrender or destroy the items.

Florida and Nevada are the only non-blue states of the 14 (plus Washington, D.C.) to outlaw bump stocks.