State Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, and Rep. Lori Berman, D-Delray Beach, announced a new bill in a press conference at the capitol today that would outlaw concealed weapons in child care facilities and government buildings.
House Bill 1087 and Senate Bill 1340 prohibit any person from openly carrying a “handgun or carry[ing a] concealed weapon or firearm into state, county, municipal, school board, constitutional officer’s, or special district office or building that primarily consists of offices for one of these entities or any combination of them or into child care facility,” a summary of the bill explains.
“Currently, Florida statutes prohibit guns in 15 specified locations and I believe this should be extended to include child care facilities and government buildings,” Berman said today.
Berman pointed out that schools have a ban on guns. Day care facilities, she argues, should have the same protections.
Sachs says she considers the absence of day cares and government buildings in gun ban laws an error. ”I really think this is a glitch in the law,” she said during the conference.
Berman tells The Florida Independent that because the law was changed last year and now says “no counties and cities can have their own laws,” she explains, there was “a wholesale repeal of laws that pertain to child care facilities governmental facilities” that she says needs to be corrected.
She says this is a way to make sure “there are no loopholes in the law.”
