What you missed in Wednesday night’s intense CNN town hall on gun violence
A week after a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, CNN hosted a town hall with students, teachers, parents, and politicians in Sunrise, Florida.
The town hall, moderated by Jake Tapper, gave survivors and family of the murdered victims the chance to confront lawmakers on the issue of school safety, gun control, and mental health. Florida’s two senators — Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio — attended, as did Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In the second half of the town hall, National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel took the stage. (You can watch the full video here.)
The event was intense, raw, and, in many ways, remarkable. High school students and parents who had just buried their friends and children asked agonizing questions to lawmakers, ones often repeated after mass tragedies: Why did this happen, and what can be done to prevent it?
The crowd was bipartisan — self-identified Trump voters asked questions — but the mood was largely in favor of stricter gun control, and the crowd responded accordingly to the lawmakers’ responses with cheers and applause or jeers and boos. The atmosphere often became confrontational, but on some level, it also felt cathartic — an overdue national reckoning in primetime.
Here are seven compelling moments from the town hall that you might have missed:
1) A grieving father confronts Marco Rubio: your comments have been “pathetically weak”
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed last week, had one of the first tense exchanges with Sen. Marco Rubio. He told the senator that his comments, and the comments of President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the shooting, were “pathetically weak.”
“So you and I are now eye to eye,” Guttenberg said to Rubio. “Because I want to like you. Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in this school this week. And look at me and tell me you accept it and you will work with us to do something about guns.”
Rubio responded by clarifying that “the problem we are facing here cannot be solved by gun laws alone.”
Rubio said he agreed that teenagers (the Parkland shooting suspect was 19) should not be able to buy rifles. He also said he would support the banning of bump stocks and changing background check systems, among other measures.
But the senator said he did not believe an assault weapons ban would prevent the Parkland shooting from happening.
“Sen. Rubio, my daughter running down the hallway at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas was shot in the back with an assault weapon,” Guttenberg fired back. “The weapon of choice. It is too easy to get; it is a weapon of war. The fact that you can’t stand with everybody in this building and say that, I’m sorry.”
2) Speaking of Marco Rubio: will you stop taking money from the NRA?
Rubio had it rough in a crowd that was vocally in favor of stricter gun control measures. Those who lobbed pointed questions still credited him for showing up, though. (Republican Gov. Rick Scott did not attend, nor did President Trump — though he hosted an emotional listening session in the White House on Wednesday with school shooting survivors.)
But perhaps the tensest exchange came when Cameron Kasky, a Stoneman Douglas High School survivor, asked Rubio directly: “Sen. Rubio, will you tell me now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?”
Rubio did not give a direct answer. “The answer is people buy into my agenda,” he responded. “And I do support the Second Amendment, and I support the things.”
Kasky press again in frustration, and boos and jeers echoed from the crowd. Rubio repeated: “The answer is people buy into my agenda.”
3) Rubio did say he’d reconsider his position on large-capacity magazines
Chris Grady, a Stoneman Douglas High School senior who’s enlisting in the military, asked Rubio a very pointed question on whether he’d agree that there was no place for large-capacity magazines.
Rubio conceded that while he hadn’t supported such measures in the past, he was now “reconsidering that position.”