The legislators who helped craft and push the bill said they’ve been told or been given strong hints that Gov. Rick Scott will approve the legislation, | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Standing with victims' families, Scott expected to sign into law gun control, school safety bill

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign or signal support for an unprecedented $400 million school safety and gun control bill on Friday when families of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre meet with him in Florida’s Capitol, according to state lawmakers who worked on the legislation.

Scott’s office would neither confirm nor deny the governor’s intentions and instead pointed to his public statements pledging to study the bill in depth and to listen to the 17 families of those killed in the state's worst school shooting in history.


Those families banded together and urged the Florida House on Wednesday to approve the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, FL SB7026 (18R), which is now on Scott’s desk and awaits his approval or veto.

The legislators who helped craft and push the bill — which passed the Florida Senate by just one vote on Monday — said they’ve been told or been given strong hints that Scott will approve the legislation, which closely mirrors a proposal he put forward after the Feb. 14 shootings in Parkland, Fla.

State Sen. Lauren Book, a Broward County Democrat who helped organize and pay for Stoneman Douglas students to travel to Tallahassee to meet legislators, said she was being told on good authority that the Republican governor is “going to sign it. That’s my understanding.”

Book, who spent time in her district with Scott immediately after the shootings, said he was personally moved to do something after meeting with kids and family members.

“It was the first time I’ve seen him engaged so heavily in an issue,” she said. “I sat with the governor and 100 kids and he was kind and gentle and listened while a lot of them were upset. He was very compassionate and understanding.”

One Republican who knows Scott well said he’s being motivated by a feeling that “the families need closure.”

In recent days, Scott made numerous appearances with one of the Parkland dads, Ryan Petty, and paid a visit to the House floor with him last week.

Scott had repeatedly spoken out against one of the most controversial provisions of the legislation, which would have allowed for armed teachers in classrooms. But the Florida Senate softened the language so that it would not apply to front-line full-time teachers. The program is voluntary, and already some of the state’s largest urban counties — where opposition to the initiative is strongest — say they’ll opt out. The program was also renamed after the hero Stoneman Douglas assistant football coach, Aaron Feis, who died shielding students from gunfire.

The bill also limits long gun purchases to people who are over 21, institutes a three-day waiting period for their purchase, bans so-called bump stocks that can make a semiautomatic rifle fire more like a machine gun and also gives police more power to seize weapons from those adjudicated “mentally defective or from those who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others.

The gun control bill — the first ever passed by the Republican-led Legislature — was opposed by the National Rifle Association and therefore many conservative Republicans. The armed school personnel measure was too much for many Democrats. Most lawmakers, though, agreed on increasing spending for public school security and mental health programs.

“I’m going to review the bill line by line,” Scott said Wednesday before the House approved the bill. “I’m going to be talking to the groups I care the most about right now because it impacted them so much ... the families.”

On Tuesday night, all the families spoke with one voice and had urged the House to pass the legislation, which it did by a 67-50 bipartisan vote.

Legislative leaders signed off on the bill Thursday morning and sent it to Scott, who has 15 days to veto it or let it become law without his signature. Lawmakers often work with the governor’s office on the timing of when to send him legislation, and its immediate release led many to believe the governor was ready to sign it into law.

Hours later on Thursday, Scott’s office announced that “he will be meeting with victims’ families on Friday in Tallahassee before he acts.”

When informed that the families were coming to the Florida Capitol, Florida Senate Republican leader Bill Galvano said of Scott and the legislation that “he’s going to sign it.” Galvano sponsored the bill in the Florida Senate.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate and Democratic state Rep. Jared Moskowitz said the governor was generally supportive of the bill when he repeatedly met with him.

“When you attend more than a dozen funerals and you’re dealing with grieving families, you have an all hands-on-deck mentality,” said Moskowitz. “He’s not bringing the families up tomorrow just for a discussion.”