Americans who hold the musket-rights granting Second Amendment near and dear to their hearts — and love high-velocity rifles more than our children — should be watching the Parkland shooter’s sentencing trial.
You, too, Marco Rubio.
After all, of Florida’s two Republican senators, you’re the one who won’t budge an inch to enact any gun-safety measures.
You, Rubio, and no-rules gun advocates don’t even need to be in this most tragic of American courtrooms, where the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — the deadliest school shooting in Florida’s history — is being dissected.
But you can watch from your remote comfort via the live broadcast on the Law & Crime network — or on your preferred Fox News. Every installment of pain and suffering is on YouTube, the aged faces of still-young parents on display when experts describe, in heart-ripping detail, how their children died, helpless before the power of a hater’s AR-15-style weapon.
Sometimes even attorneys wipe off tears.
We can learn from the great loss of others. The parents and survivors want us to. Respect them. But, weakling that you are, I know you won’t look them in the eye.
The victims’ families deserve attention, especially from people who don’t want to see the consequences of rejecting a national assault-weapons ban.
Give it to them, if only for the sake of future victims for whom we must do better, but don’t and won’t because of politicians like you, Rubio, no matter the death toll in Parkland or Uvalde.
A mother’s pain
Put yourself in Linda Beigel Schulman’s shoes.
“I will miss my son for the rest of my life. ...,” said Schulman, the mother of teacher and cross-country coach, uncle, brother and grandson Scott Beigel, killed at 35. “I will never get over it. I will never get past it. My life will never, ever be the same.”
The least you can do, Senator, is hear the facts being meticulously exposed under oath by witnesses and the prosecution, which is asking that Nikolas Cruz, 23, be sentenced to death for his deadly shooting spree.
And he should be. He’s such a self-serving, calculating man that, on Monday, when parents and siblings described their lost loved ones, making a tremendous effort for people to “see” the 17 lives Cruz took and the 17 people he injured, he wore a double-looped COVID mask that gave him cover. When his weaponry was the subject, he wore none.
Still the sick coward.
AR-15, weapon of choice
Only cowards need a weapon of war to forever wreck innocents’ lives. It implies intent to savagely kill. Not to hunt or target shoot for sport. There are plenty of alternatives for those.
Stop the shady naivete and understand that the fascination with this weapon is the amount of suffering it delivers.
Listen to medical testimony about the carnage these weapons deliver..
The Parkland parents endured it. You should too, Rubio.
Medical examiner Dr. Terrill Tops explained how a single bullet from Cruz’s legally purchased rifle severed two major blood vessels that supplied blood to the brain, right arm, and right side of the face of Luke Hoyer, 15 — more than enough proof of why these weapons have no place in retail sales.
Take a good look at the grief-stricken face of Luke’s mom, Gena, who dabbed her tears with a tissue, and his father, Tom, also affected by Tops’ testimony and worried about his wife. Both listened to the doctor’s detailed explanation of how the double-whammy of insurmountable blood loss and its accumulation in Luke’s lungs killed their son.
No, you shouldn’t be able to purchase an AR-15-style rifle with more ease than you would a car, another deadly weapon for which we do have tons of rules. Listen to the testimony of Michael Morrison, the former owner of Sunrise Tactical Supply, who sold the gun to Cruz.
The would-be killer filled out the required ATF Form 4473 and gave his driver’s license. A week later, he was able to pick up the semi-automatic rifle and magazine that came with it. Cruz lied about what he intended to do with the rifle, go shooting with friends, and used it a year later to turn an ordinary school day into the stuff of nightmares.
Can’t ignore Parkland
Senator, this sentencing trial isn’t happening in a remote district whose killing field you can conveniently ignore.
It’s unfolding in your turf at the Broward County Courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
The least you can do is acknowledge the high cost we in South Florida paid on Feb. 14, 2018, for your right to be one of the National Rifle Association’s most loved politicians.
Weasel away as usual if you wish, but the Parkland parents — and the generation who took the bullets and survived only because Cruz, the ultimate coward, didn’t want to take a bullet himself from police — will not let you forget it.
