Under Florida law, citizens barred from owning firearms because of criminal histories can still purchase ammunition without a background check. South Florida Democratic state Rep. Dan Daley says that’s a problem, which is why he recently refiled legislation to close that loophole.

“A bad guy gets their hands on a weapon – whether it’s through a private sale, whether he stole it, whether they found it, whatever the case may be – they can then walk into any store – a Walmart…and purchase as much ammunition for that firearm as they like. And no one is ever going to be able to stop them,” Daley told Political Connections during a Zoom interview. 

Daley has branded the bill (HB 25) “Jaime’s Law” in homage to Jaime Guttenberg, the 14 year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who was among the 17 killed on Valentine’s Day in 2018 in Parkland.  

It will be a tough sell in Tallahassee. 

“This has been tried before in the past, and it has failed, miserably,” says Bob White, the chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida. White notes that a measure similar to Daley’s proposal that was approved by California voters in 2016 was blocked earlier this year by a federal judge. He also cites the fact that in the 1980s, Congress loosened restrictions on purchasing ammunition that was part of the 1968 federal Gun Control Act.

There are a handful of states that do require buyers to undergo background checks to obtain firearms or ammunition licenses that they must show when buying bullets, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 

White also says such legislation would create a “huge” black market for ammunition, saying “it’s totally impractical to expect someone to go through a background check every time they want to go purchase a box of ammunition.”

Daley is very aware of the political realities when it comes to passing gun legislation in the Florida Legislature. That’s why he’s included a number of exemptions in the bill, such as if the transfer of ammunition is exclusively at a shooting range or for the purposes of hunting, trapping or fishing if the transferor “has no reason to believe that the transferee intends to use the ammunition in a place where it is illegal.”

“Look, it’s going to be an uphill battle, I understand that,” he says. “I understand the reality of the situation in Tallahassee, but again…this is not an overreach.”

Following the Parkland shooting, an activist group called Ban Assault Weapons Now (BAWN) began collecting signatures in an attempt to place a ban on the possession of any semi-automatic rifle or shotgun capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition on the 2022 ballot as a constitutional amendment. The Florida Supreme Court blocked that attempt earlier this year, ruling that the ballot summary was deceptive. 

A spokesman for BAWN told Political Connections that the group is now focused on electing statewide lawmakers who share their commitment to banning assault weapons. He also says the group intends to back a legislative proposal to ban assault weapons in the coming session. While no such bill has emerged yet for 2021, Democrats Carlos Guillermo Smith in the House and Gary Farmer in the Senate have previously filed such bills in recent legislative sessions.