State Sen. Ben Albritton, the lawmaker who will become president of the Florida Senate after the 2024 election, took a two-hour tour Friday of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre site.

Three other legislators were with him: state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who will become minority party leader after the next election;  state Sen. Lauren Book, the current Senate minority leader, and state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, who represents northwest Broward and was mayor of Parkland when the massacre took place in her city on Feb. 14, 2018.

Also on the tour was Albritton’s wife, Missy, and an unknown number of family members of victims of the massacre.

“Obviously, it was moving,” the senator said in a brief interview after an unrelated event elsewhere in Broward.

“We were asked to (tour the site). And, look, regardless of what you believe as it relates to any issue involved with Stoneman Douglas, anything that I could learn today that I felt like I could apply to school safety, I was open minded to,” said Albritton. “I learned from some of the parents there and looked at the building itself and recognized what may be some places we can use for better security in the buildings that in itself based on the circumstances of that event would have saved lives.

“I went there open minded, just wanting to learn what I could learn about how to do things better,” Albritton said.

In contrast to the tour a delegation of members of Congress took of the building on Aug. 4, and the tour a year earlier by members of the jury in the case of the shooter who killed 17 people and injured 17 at the school, Friday’s was not publicized.

Albritton, who is from Wauchula, in Hendry County, roughly midway between Lake Okeechobee and Tampa, is currently the Republican Party leader in the Senate. He spent Friday in Broward with Pizzo, a Miami-Dade Democrat who represents most of East Broward.

Albritton said Hunschofsky suggested he tour the building. Later, after Pizzo and Albritton held an event in Hollywood on emergency preparedness, Hunschofsky declined to discuss the tour, including which family members of massacre victims were present.

When he was a member of the Florida House, Albritton voted for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, in the immediate aftermath of the massacre.

The law raised the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, created a statewide waiting period for long-gun sales and made it easier for law enforcement to seize weapons from people suspected of being dangerous.

The Florida Legislature has shifted to the right since that law was passed, and additional gun restrictions are exceedingly unlikely. This year the state enacted a law that allows people to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Albritton voted in favor.

Under the heading “Defending Your Constitutional Rights,” Albritton’s campaign website says he “believes in the constitutional rights of America. As a gun owner, he values the right of Americans to protect and defend their families. He will champion and defend your Second Amendment rights against the threats of the Radical Left.”

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.