A bring your gun to school debate simmers on a back burner while supporters and opponents of gun regulations prepare for the 2019 session of the Florida Legislature.

Public schools and state universities generally are gun-free zones and the Florida Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence wants to keep it that way. But the more than 100 groups that make up the coalition face new challenges with an overhaul of a key Senate committee and a new governor who seems to favor looser gun regulations.

Then there's the school public safety commission formed after the St. Valentine's Day massacre at Parkland High School. It must submit a list of recommendations to the governor and Legislature by Jan. 1. The chairman said it's time for Florida to rethink what it thinks about teachers, guns and safety.

“Let’s not make this an ideological decision, let’s look at the facts and evidence,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told the AP in a discussion about school shootings and arming teachers. "We know from the history of these things that the majority are stopped by school personnel."

Since the terrorist-style attack in February on a Parkland High School that left 17 dead there have been 25 more school shootings reported in the U.S. – including two more in Florida.

Gualtieri, this week, briefed a meeting of county school superintendents on the commission’s work. He was struck by the fact that the Parkland shooter stopped five times to reload an assault rifle. Five opportunities, in Gualtieri’s view, for someone to stop the killing.

After the Parkland killings thousands of high school and college-aged demonstrators descended on the state Capitol for the biggest protest rally in recent memory.

A month of marches:

They demanded changes to Florida law and lawmakers responded with a package of gun regulations that reversed a more than 30-year-long deregulation trend that provided easier access to firearms.

Tucked in a proposal that increased the minimum age to purchase a gun and extended background checks to more purchases, was a provision to allow school districts to train and arm employees other than teachers. Thirteen of the state’s 67 countywide districts adopted the program.

Thursday, the League of Women Voters filed suit in Duval County CIrcuit Court to block the Duval County Public Schools from allowing anyone other than a law enforcement officer to carry a gun on campus.

DCPS wants to hire and arm "School Safety Assistants" at elementary and middle schools.

"The idea that these 'guards' would keep our schools safer from gun violence is misguided and absurd," said Patricia Brigham, president of the Florida League of Women Voters.

Unions representing faculty from kindergarten teachers to university professors oppose guns in the classroom. Their representatives say there is near unanimous support to allow only trained law enforcement, often called school resource officers, to carry guns on a campus.

“We prepare to fight this issue every year," said Marshall Ogletree of the United Faculty of Florida. “Anytime you let any weapon on a campus you are inviting trouble.”

The UFF and others opposed to campus carry legislation in recent years have counted on the Senate Judiciary Committee to block the proposals. But two of their key allies, Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami-Dade, and Sen. Renee Garcia, R-Miami-Dade, no longer sit on the committee.

Sen. David Simmons, R-Seminole, is the new chairman. He is joined on the committee by senators Dennis Baxley and Kelli Stargell who along with Simmons are staunch supporters of Second Amendment rights.

"It's going to be very challenging to say the least," said Andy Pelosi, director of the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus. "We will have our work cut out for us."

Pelosi's group is part of the Florida Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence that will work a 2019 agenda that includes a ban on assault weapons, more comprehensive background checks for gun purchases and blocking any attempts to loosen regulations to allow guns on campuses.

"We don't think adding more guns is the solution," said Pelosi. "We already have at least 300 million guns in civilian hands in the U.S. right now and look at our gun problem."

Florida is one of sixteen states that prohibit guns on college campuses, according to Campus Safety, and is among the 32 states that do not generally allow K-12 teachers to bear arms in the classroom, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center.

But given the frequency of mass shootings, 323 through Nov. 28, gun-rights proponents welcomed Gaultier’s suggestion to discuss schools, gun-free zones and public safety.

“A gun-free zone is an impediment to freedom and it endangers citizens in gun-free zones that are becoming killing fields for lunatics,” said Marion Hammer, an NRA lobbyist.

“That law only stops law-abiding people from protecting themselves. No criminal worries about the law,” she told the Democrat.

Opponents dismiss such observations and say guns at schools are "problematic."

"When law enforcement arrives on the scene they don't know who the bad guy is," said Ogletree, with reference to the confusion created by an active shooter.

Supporters counter that the repeal of gun-free zones give people a fighting chance.

"People need to keep an open mind to the reality that if someone else in that school had a gun it could have saved kids' lives," said Gualteiri.

Florida State University President, John Thrasher helped block a guns on campus bill when he was a state senator in 2011. And he recently pledged at a candlelight vigil for victims of a Tallahassee mass shooting to continue to fight to keep guns off the FSU campus.

“I’m angry... And now gun violence has struck our community once again, as it did in 2014,” said Thrasher, at a Nov. 11 vigil for a FSU professor and student killed when a gunman opened fire at a Yoga studio.

“I also think, as a society, we need to think about how we can keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people and how we can balance the rights of gun owners with the rights of all Americans to pursue life, liberty and happiness,” Thrasher continued. “People have a right to feel safe in their schools, in their places of worship, anywhere they gather, including a yoga studio.”

The discussion of how to balance those is at a simmer. But the heat is about to be turned up.

Pre-session committee meetings begin Dec. 11. And come Jan. 1, the governor and Legislature will have the public safety commission's list of recommendations to make public schools a safer place.

And there are those who think Florida needs to talk again about guns, schools and safety.

Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com.