TALLAHASSEE — A bill that would grant immunity to Floridians who show guns or fire warning shots in self-defense could be poised to pass this year after failing to get a hearing in 2013.

The so-called warning-shot bill (SB 448), which would amend the state's controversial "stand your ground" self-defense law, cleared its first Senate committee on Wednesday.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee unanimously passed the bill by committee Chairman Greg Evers, R-Baker.

One member of the panel, Sen. Charlie Dean, a former Citrus County sheriff, even asked House sponsor Neil Combee to consider adding an amendment that would expunge the criminal records of people charged in this way. Combee said he would.

Combee, R-Polk City, first sponsored the bill after hearing about Marissa Alexander, a Jacksonville woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison under the 10-20-Life sentencing law for firing a gun into a wall during a dispute with her husband.

Combee described Alexander's sentence as an example of the "negative unintended consequences" of 10-20-Life, which requires mandatory-minimum prison terms for gun-related crimes.

Under the 10-20-Life law, possessing a gun while committing certain crimes is punishable by at least 10 years in prison, discharging a gun while committing those crimes is punishable by at least 20 years in prison, and hurting or killing someone during those crimes is punishable by 25 years to life in prison.

The 2013 version of Combee's bill was opposed by the Florida Sheriffs Association and prosecutors who argued that the sentencing bill was working too well to be altered.

The 2014 bills would permit people who are being attacked and fear for their lives to display guns, threaten to use the weapons or fire warning shots under the same circumstances by which they could legally shoot to kill.