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 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.
“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.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
