Now, Budd has found a conspicuous new partner: Carlos Curbelo, South Florida's self-styled "moderate" Republican who after the Parkland massacre pledged to back new gun regulations.
While Illinois's Roskam is no gun-hater — he's been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and has appeared at least one NRA rally — Budd's gun-rights beliefs are as hardcore as you'd expect from a gun-shop owner. After the Pulse massacre in Orlando in 2016, Budd told his hometown Charlotte Observer that the massacre shouldn't be blamed on firearms.[1]
"This is not a device problem, but a people problem,” he said two years ago. “It’s intellectually lazy to continue to talk about a device problem when the real problem is evil – the darkest parts of human nature that can often go unchecked at times.”
That year, the NRA spent $4,000 trying to help Budd get elected, per the Winston-Salem Journal. (A spokesperson for Curbelo did not immediately respond to a message sent yesterday evening.)
Last year, Budd refused to back a ban on "bump stocks" after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, where the shooter used the device to modified his semi-automatic, AR-15-style rifle into an effectively fully automatic weapon to spray bullets at the crowd enjoying a country-music concert. But Budd said banning bump stocks wouldn't solve anything because the real problem was a lack of religion in civil society.
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