TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Three weeks after the Parkland high school shooting, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has a gun-control bill on his desk that challenges the National Rifle Association but falls short of what the Republican and survivors of the massacre demanded.
Now he must decide whether to sign it. Scott has not said what he will do, and he plans to take up the issue today with relatives of 17 people slain in the Feb. 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
"I'm going to take the time, and I'm going to read the bill and I'm going to talk to families," he said Wednesday.
State lawmakers formally delivered the overhaul package Thursday. The governor has 15 days to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature.
The measure would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and extend a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns. It would also create a so-called guardian program enabling school employees and many teachers to carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and their school districts agree to participate.
Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools, and establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools. The bill would also ban bump stocks that allow guns to mimic fully automatic fire and seek to improve communication among schools, law enforcement and state agencies.
In other developments Thursday, the Broward County sheriff's office released 12 minutes of radio transmissions from its deputies and a neighboring police agency that highlighted the chaos the day of the attack. That material also included 10 of the 81 recordings of calls by students and parents to a 911 center.
The excerpts showed that a deputy on school grounds first thought the bangs were firecrackers but quickly realized that they were gunshots -- yet he never ran toward them. Other responding deputies and officers desperately tried to sort through a chaotic scene, treat the injured, lock down the school and locate the shooter.
In the shooting aftermath, Florida's governor broke with the NRA. Scott had received top marks from the lobbying group in the past for supporting gun-rights measures and his new stance reinvigorated the gun-control movement.
The governor has called for raising the minimum age to purchase any type of gun, but he does not support arming teachers. Instead, he wanted lawmakers to adopt his $500 million proposal to put at least one law enforcement officer in every school.
The NRA opposes raising age limits to buy weapons or imposing new waiting periods. In a statement Thursday, NRA and Unified Sportsmen of Florida lobbyist Marion Hammer called the bill "a display of bullying and coercion" that would violate Second Amendment rights and punish law-abiding citizens.
President Donald Trump congratulated Florida on the legislation, saying state lawmakers "passed a lot of very
