The families of the Parkland shooting victims have done more to enact gun safety legislation in the five weeks since the 14 February massacre than others have in more than a decade, Florida senator Marco Rubio[1] has said.
Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of Saturday’s March for Our Lives in Washington, Rubio credited the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting with forcing action on Capitol Hill – without politicizing the debate beyond repair.
“They’ve done more in five weeks on gun violence than has been done in 15 years,” he said. “The parents have come together, all 17, even though they don’t always agree. They aren’t out there saying, ‘Don’t vote for anything unless we have everything’.”
But Rubio also warned against the increasingly partisan nature of the guns debate, which he said could halt the momentum behind a new spirit of bipartisan compromise on issues that include gun violence restraining orders and raising the minimum age restrictions for purchasing firearms.
embed[2]“The attitude of total victory -- the idea that somehow some of us are going to come up here and get everything we want and just run over the other side -- our system is just not set up for that,” Rubio said.
“We’re creating unrealistic expectations and, in the process, nothing happens.”
The Republican senator rejected in particular the notion that an assault weapons ban should serve as a litmus test, suggesting such an approach was neither pragmatic nor productive.
Rubio was interviewed as part of the guest-editing of the Guardian US site by student journalists from the Eagle Eye, the newspaper of Stoneman Douglas. The students requested the interview with the Florida[3] senator because they particularly wanted to put questions directly to lawmakers from both parties as part of the collaboration.
Rubio sat down with the Guardian on Capitol Hill on Thursday, shortly after unveiling a so-called “red flag” bill, which would encourage states to adopt policies allowing law enforcement officials or family members to file gun restraining orders to remove firearms from potentially violent individuals.
Rubio’s home state of Florida, as well as a handful of others, have enacted such laws. Orlando police have already credited the law with preventing a potential mass shooting.
[4]
Congress also appeared close to sending a spending bill to Donald Trump’s desk, which included measures that would: reverse a ban on gun violence research; and amend the existing background checks system. Rubio is a co-sponsor of the latter proposalwhich does not close loopholes for private sales or purchases at gun shows but tightens measures to ensure that states and federal agencies are actually entering the proper records into the federal background check system.
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