FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Immediately after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., promised to support a law raising the minimum legal age for buying assault-style rifles.
Now Rubio doesn’t support the idea, arguing it wouldn’t reduce gun violence.
Gun violence and what to do about it produced one of the sharpest exchanges between Rubio and his challenger, U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Orlando, in their debate Tuesday night in Lake Worth. It’s the only debate scheduled between the candidates before the Nov. 8 election.
On Feb. 14, 2018, a 19-year-old used an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 people and wound 17 others at the Parkland high school. Last week, a jury decided the killer would get a maximum sentence of life without parole, and not the death penalty.
Then and now
A week after the massacre, Rubio unequivocally supported raising the minimum purchase age — the idea that almost five years later he said wouldn’t work.
“I absolutely believe that in this country if you are 18 years of age you should not be able to buy a rifle and I will support a law that takes that right away,” he said during a CNN town hall that originated from the Sunrise arena then known as the BB&T Center.
His 2018 statement of support came during an exchange at the town hall with Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed at the school.
Later in the town hall, Rubio said, “This very evening, I have told you that I support lifting the age from 18 to 21 of buying a rifle. ... I think that’s the right thing to do.”
On Tuesday night Rubio was asked if he still supports the proposal. His initial response was indirect: “Let me tell you why that law doesn’t work and why that proposal doesn’t work.”
He continued on, talking for about a minute about how shooters used similar weapons they couldn’t legally own, failures in the Broward Sheriff’s Office, School District and the FBI before the massacre, and his support for a version of a red-flag law, but not what he called a “crazy” version that Democrats favored.
Red flag laws, like the one in Florida, allow judges to order removal of guns from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. Rubio asserted that a Demings-supported version “allows some co-worker that doesn’t like you to go to some liberal judge and take away your Second Amendment rights.”
A push from the moderator on Rubio’s current view on raising the age got a more definitive answer.
Moderator: “I want to make sure that I understand that what you said in 2018 is not what you believe is the solution today.”
Rubio: “I do not believe that that is.”
The senator parried with moderator Todd McDermott, of WPBF-Ch. 25, in Palm Beach County on the issue.
“Denying the right to buy it is not gonna keep them from doing, here’s the fundamental issue: The fundamental issue is why are these kids, why are these people going out there and massacring people. ... Because a lot of people own AR-15s, and they don’t kill everyone. A majority of people don’t.”
Response
Demings delivered a blistering response.
“People who are families of victims of gun violence just heard that and they’re asking themselves, what in the hell did he just say?” Demings said.
Pointing to Rubio’s 2016 statements that he was motivated to run that year for a second term because of the Pulse nightclub massacre — after previously stating that he wouldn’t — Demings added, “And yet you’ve done nothing, Nothing to help address gun violence and get dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. ... And Senator, 24 years in elected office and you have not yet risen to that occasion, and then when asked about it, you say something that makes no sense.”
Candidates’ views
Just as with abortion, the other highly contentious cultural and social issue the candidates discussed during the debate, Rubio and Demings didn’t display any kind of common ground about what various proposals would and wouldn’t do.
The time devoted to the subject — about six and a half minutes of the 56-minute debate — didn’t lead to a great deal of clarity about the candidates’ precise positions.
Broadly speaking, Demings, a former Orlando police chief, favors additional restrictions on weapons to curb gun violence. Rubio, who has been endorsed by organizations representing police, favors far fewer limits.
Exchange
Part of the back and forth:
Rubio: “What makes no sense is that we’re going to actually pass laws that only law-abiding people will follow and criminals will continue to violate. The truth of the matter is at the end of the day that Americans have a Second Amendment right to protect themselves. They have and and these killers that are out there, if they’re intent on killing as they are, they have found multiple ways to get ahold of weapons and cause mass destruction.”
Demings: “Look every time we talk about responsible gun ownership and legislation that could help protect lives, you pull the Second Amendment out. My father was a gun owner. Has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. This is about taking dangerous guns out of the hands of dangerous people and the overwhelming majority of people in our nation want us to do just that. How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school college, church, synagogue, a grocery store, a movie theater, a mall and a nightclub and do nothing?”
Rubio: “Well everything she’s for would have done nothing to stop any of these shootings.”
Clearinghouse
Rubio touted his support for legislation creating a federal clearinghouse that categorizes, assesses, and shares best practices for school safety measures and identifies the resources necessary to implement them.
The legislation was sponsored in the Senate and House by Democrats and Republicans from Florida and elsewhere.
Citing the clearinghouse, Rubio said, “She’s gonna mock it. She shouldn’t, because the idea came from a Parkland father, and there’s a clearinghouse there that basically tells schools, for example, this is what works for safety and this is what doesn’t. And we got that put in there.”
Demings said much more needs to be done.
“Senator Rubio thought that he could reduce this very critical issue to supporting a clearinghouse on the Homeland Security website, and he thought he would get a pass for the mass shootings that we’ve had in our state, and doing nothing significant to do anything about it,” she said.
In a twist that illustrates the way Congress works, the clearinghouse was made permanent by a provision on the multifaceted federal gun violence legislation enacted this year. Demings voted for it; Rubio voted no.
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