Florida Just Changed the Law for Armed Church Volunteers. Here's What That Actually Means.

By Adam Shrider | Gatekeeper Defense Training LLC

On July 1st, 2026, Florida Chapter 2026-46 takes effect. The law itself is short — one sentence. It exempts unpaid volunteers who provide armed security at a church, mosque, synagogue, or other place of worship from the state's private security licensing requirements under Chapter 493.

That's the entire substance of the law. Read it for yourself — it's a single paragraph: laws.flrules.org/2026/46.

No concealed carry license requirement. No mandated background check. No sheriff approval process. No state-defined training standard.

The licensing requirement that used to apply to paid commercial security guards no longer applies to volunteers protecting a house of worship. That's the whole change.

And that's exactly why I want to talk about it.

I've Been Inside This World for Over 20 Years

Before I was a firearms instructor, I spent over two decades serving in the local church — as an usher, a safety team member, and eventually helping build and lead safety teams from the inside. I know what Sunday morning looks like from the ground level. I know the culture, the people, the dynamics, and the weight of the responsibility that comes with caring for a congregation.

And I know that for most of that time, the conversation about church safety was either nonexistent or treated as someone else's problem.

That's changing. The Sutherland Springs shooting in 2017 changed it for a lot of churches. The West Freeway Church of Christ shooting in 2019 — where an armed volunteer stopped an attacker in six seconds — changed it for even more. Churches across Florida are now asking the right questions.

Florida's new law is a response to that shift. Lawmakers recognized that the Chapter 493 licensing framework — built for paid commercial security personnel — was never designed for unpaid church volunteers, and it removed that mismatch.

I think that's the right call. But removing a barrier is not the same as solving the underlying problem.

The Law Removed a Requirement. It Didn't Add a Standard.

Here's what I need every pastor, elder, safety director, and armed volunteer in Florida to understand clearly: Chapter 2026-46 took something away. It didn't put anything in its place.

Before this law, an unpaid church volunteer doing armed security technically fell under a licensing framework built for professional security guards — hours of required training, fees, and a process that didn't fit the reality of a Sunday morning volunteer. That mismatch is now gone.

But nothing replaced it. There is no state-mandated minimum training standard for church safety volunteers. No required vetting process. No mandated use-of-force education. No sheriff's office approval. The earlier draft of this bill actually included some of those safeguards — a sheriff-approved security plan, background screening, a concealed weapon license requirement — but those provisions were removed before the bill passed into law. What remains is the bare exemption.

That means the entire responsibility for getting this right — selecting the right people, training them properly, and establishing real policy — now sits with your church alone. Not the state. Not a licensing board. Your church.

The Law Can't Change What Happens Inside a Crowded Sanctuary

I've trained a lot of church safety team members over the years. I currently serve on one myself. And the thing I tell every single student before we ever touch a firearm is this:

A sanctuary is one of the most difficult defensive environments you will ever operate in.

It's crowded. People are seated shoulder to shoulder. There are children present. Elderly members who can't move quickly. Narrow aisles. Inconsistent lighting. Acoustics that amplify every sound. Parishioners who will freeze, run, scream, or fall — all at the same time — the moment something goes wrong.

Now add an active threat. Now add adrenaline. Now add the fact that your fine motor skills, your decision-making, and your visual processing all change under extreme stress. They don't get better. They get worse. That's not a character flaw — that's physiology. It happens to trained law enforcement officers. It happens to military veterans. It will happen to you.

No law changes that. Only training does.

A Concealed Carry License Was Never Church Safety Training — And Now It's Not Even Required

I say this as someone who believes deeply in the right to carry and in the responsibility that comes with it.

Even before this law, a basic concealed carry course was never the same thing as being prepared to use a firearm defensibly in a crowded sanctuary. Now that the law doesn't even require a CCW for volunteer church security, that gap is wider, not narrower.

A CCW course teaches the fundamentals of safe handling and the legal basics of carrying. It does not teach you how to identify a threat through a panicked crowd, how to make a shoot or don't-shoot decision in under a second, or how to communicate with a partner covering the opposite side of the building.

Those are different skills. They require different training — training that the law no longer requires, but that your congregation absolutely deserves.

What the Law Actually Says — In Full

Because so much has been written and reported about this bill — including earlier drafts that never became law — I want to be precise. Here is the entire operative text of Chapter 2026-46:

"This chapter shall not apply to: Any person who, on a voluntary basis and without compensation, provides armed security services on the premises of a church, mosque, synagogue, or other place of worship."

That's it. One subsection added to Florida's private security licensing statute. Nothing more.

It does not:

• Define a minimum training standard for armed church volunteers

• Require a background check or vetting process

• Require sheriff or law enforcement approval of a security plan

• Eliminate civil liability for the church or the volunteer

• Change Florida's legal standard for the use of deadly force

That last point matters most. If your church organizes an armed safety team and one of those volunteers makes a bad decision — shoots the wrong person, or misses and strikes a bystander — the church can still be drawn into civil litigation. The questions will be direct: Who selected this person? What training did they receive? Who approved the safety plan? Was there a written use-of-force policy? A law that simply removes a licensing requirement doesn't answer any of those questions for you.

What a Serious Church Safety Program Actually Looks Like

I've been building and training church safety teams from the inside for years. Here's what I believe every team needs — not because the law requires it, but because the people in your pews deserve it:

Formal selection. Not everyone who volunteers to carry should be on the safety team. Temperament matters. Judgment matters. A background review matters — even though the state no longer requires one.

Written policies. Role, authority, use of force, de-escalation, communication, and coordination with law enforcement. These need to exist on paper before they're needed in practice.

Use of force training. Florida law justifies deadly force only when a person reasonably believes it's necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Your team needs to understand what that means — and more importantly, what it doesn't mean.

Live fire training beyond static paper shooting. Drawing from concealment, shooting on the move, multiple target engagement, stress inoculation. The range should be uncomfortable sometimes. That's the point.

Scenario-based training in your actual building. Walking the hallways, pieing the corners, practicing communication with a partner. Not in a generic classroom. In the building where it would actually happen.

Team communication and identification. When law enforcement arrives, they don't know who the good guys are. Your team needs a protocol for that.

Documentation. Every training event, every qualification, every policy update. Documentation protects the volunteer, the church, and the congregation — and it's the only "compliance" that actually exists now, since the state isn't requiring any.

The Law Removed the Barrier. It Left the Responsibility Entirely With You.

Florida did something reasonable by removing a licensing requirement that was never designed for unpaid church volunteers. Houses of worship should be able to protect their people without navigating a regulatory framework built for paid commercial security firms.

But I want to be honest about what this means in practice: the state stepped back, and it did not step in to fill the gap. There is no training mandate, no vetting standard, no oversight. Your church is now fully responsible for getting this right, with no state safety net underneath you.

That's not a criticism of the law. In many ways, the responsibility for training and preparing your own volunteers always belonged to the church — this law just made that explicit.

The people in those pews — the ones who have no idea there's an armed volunteer at the back of the room — they didn't change on July 1st. They're still counting on someone who took this seriously, with or without a state requirement telling them to.

If your church has a safety team, train them properly. If your church is building one, build it right from day one. If you're a volunteer who carries and hasn't had formal training, now is the time — not because the law demands it, but because no one else is going to.

The law gave you the freedom to serve. Training is what makes you capable of actually protecting the people you love.

Adam Shrider is a USCCA-certified firearms instructor with over 20 years of church ministry experience as a servant leader, usher, and safety team member. He is the founder of Gatekeeper Defense Training LLC in Orlando, Florida, and currently serves as a safety team lead at his home church. He trains church safety teams and responsible armed citizens across Central Florida.

Called to Protect. Trained to Act.

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