Florida Governor Rick Scott on Friday signed a law passed by state parliamentarians raising the legal minimum age for firearms and imposing a three-day waiting period for all sales. rifles and allows some school staff to be armed.
This law is challenged by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun lobby, which announced it will launch a federal legal proceeding to have it overturned.
According to the NRA, the measures introduced violate the constitutional rights of Americans.
The law was named Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act , named after the high school in Parkland, Florida, where a 19-year-old shot dead 17 people on February 14 with a semi-automatic assault rifle.
“Today is an example for the whole country, in that it shows that the government can and must act quickly,” said the governor before the signing, surrounded by survivors of the shooting and members of the their families.
This legislation, he said, is the result of a compromise that took into account the concerns of supporters of gun control and defenders of the carrying of weapons.
The surviving students had called for some of the measures included in the law despite the objections of the NRA.
The Florida parliamentarians, however, rejected one of their main demands: the prohibition of semi-automatic assault rifles, of the kind used for the Parkland killings.
One of the most prominent measures in the new law is the provision to allow school personnel to be trained and armed to defend their school in the event of a Parkland-type attack.
The law was adopted by Florida’s elected officials after the addition of a formula that exempts most teachers from participating in this program, to rally support from Democrats and Rick Scott, who said he was against what teachers are armed.
Mr. Scott said he was still not convinced by the measure, but still want to sign the law.