Rubio is jeered as CNN town hall meeting about Florida school shooting turns angry

A massive town hall quickly turned into searing television Wednesday night as a grieving father of a girl killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting angrily confronted U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., over his opposition to gun control.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime, 14, was among the 17 people killed at Stoneman Douglas on Feb. 14, made his position clear from the moment he got the microphone. “I’m pissed,” he said. “Your comments this week and those of our president have been pathetically weak.”

There were six and a half minutes of dramatic back and forth between Guttenberg and Rubio at “Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action,” a two-hour town hall organized and televised by CNN. The network said 7,000 people were at the BB&T Center for the event.

Guttenberg demanded that Rubio look at him and defend his position against banning the weapons like the AR-15, the weapon used by Stoneman Douglas shooter Nikolas Cruz.

Rubio’s view, that the problem “cannot be solved by gun laws alone,” didn’t sit well with the crowd, which jeered — or with Guttenberg.

“If this would have prevented this from happening, I would support it,” Rubio said. Instead, he said he favors action that would prevent a “deranged” person like Cruz from acquiring any weapons.

Guttenberg responded by explaining that his daughter was “shot in the back with an assault weapon” while running down the hall at Stoneman Douglas.

It was the first of many confrontations on the stage at which Rubio was forced to defend positions on guns. A student said Rubio shouldn’t take any more political contributions from the National Rifle Association. Another student referred to NRA contributions to Rubio as “blood money.”

Stoneman Douglas High senior Ryan Deitsch, who hid in a closet with classmates during the shooting, asked Rubio why it’s falling on students to press for change. “We’d like to know why do we have to be the ones to do this.” Deitsch said. “Why do we have to march on Washington just to save innocent lives?”

Teacher Ashley Kurth, responding to President Trump’s suggestion earlier in the day of arming teachers, asked Rubio if she should get extra training and be issued a Kevlar vest. Rubio said he doesn’t support arming teachers. In the second half of the forum, Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said he, too, was opposed to arming teachers.

The senator also had a back and forth – usually testy for public officials in a public forum – with U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, who represents Parkland and wants a ban on assault weapons. Rubio said that would have so many loopholes that people bent on doing harm could still acquire weapons that would do the same thing as the gun used at the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

Deutch said that wasn’t a reason to avoid action. And he said a previous assault weapons ban had some positive effect; “mass shootings went up 200 percent in the decade after the assault weapons ban expired.”

He received a standing ovation.

Rubio wasn’t the only one who got a hostile reaction from the South Floridians streamed into the BB&T Center in Sunrise for the nationally televised town hall meeting a week after the massacre of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Dana Loesch, national spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, also received multiple jeers from the audience during her appearance on stage during the second half of the town hall. Loesch was challenged by Emma Gonzalez, a Stoneman Douglas student who has been an outspoken advocate for gun control, Broward Sheriff Scott Israel, and Diane Wolk Rogers, a teacher who survived the shooting.

Loesch referred to Cruz as an “insane monster,” “this monster” and “nuts,” and said he was the kind of person who shouldn’t have any kind of weapon.

The setting for the town hall is usually used for far happier events than discussing the aftermath of a massacre. The BB&T Center is normally used for hockey games, concerts — and occasional mass political rallies. Candidate Donald Trump held a rally at the BB&T Center in 2016 and candidate Barack Obama held two large rallies at the Sunrise arena in 2008, then called the BankAtlantic Center, including one just a day before the election.

“We thought it was very effective in getting us to voice our concerns and our pent-up frustrations,” said Audrey Robillard, a teacher. She thought the students who posed questions handled themselves well.

“I think they pressed the politicians well,” she said.

Stoneman Douglas junior Joshua Alcantara said on his way into the town hall that he knows change isn’t going to happen quickly. “I do hope to spread awareness. Hopefully, this will spark something.” Alcantara believes the solution is probably some combination of gun regulations and better mental health services.

Jasmine Lozada, 17, a junior at Stoneman Douglas, said she would be happy if even some small changes are put in place.

“I just want my friends to be safe. I don’t want to see my friends dying,” she said. Lozada would have been in the building the gunman shot up, but her teacher was absent and the substitute took them to the auditorium for class.

Many of the students attending were confident that their movement to improve school safety will succeed and were ready to forge ahead. “Some people need to open up their eyes,” said Stoneman Douglas freshman Nicholas Hernandez. “It’s pretty bad that innocent kids are dying.”

Some were frustrated that laws have not changed already after previous incidents.

“We should have had change a long time ago,” said Stoneman Douglas freshman Marla Eveillard, who was also upset that warning signs about Cruz weren’t heeded.

“Police have been to his house so many times and they didn’t do anything and that makes me so mad,” she said.

Parent Rob Brighton isn’t confident there will be change for the better in Florida, which he called “a strong gun rights state.”

“This is a first step if people let their leaders know what they want them to do,” Brighton said.

“Those kids will be scarred for life,” said Brighton, whose daughter Julia is a freshman at Stoneman Douglas and saw three of her classmates murdered in front of her.

Beforehand, CNN showed pictures of President Donald Trump and Gov. Rick Scott and told viewers they were invited to participate in person at the BB&T Center — or remotely from Washington, D.C., or Tallahassee. “Both declined CNN’s invitation to appear,” CNN anchor John Berman said.

Also declining to appear: Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Florida Senate President Joe Negron both declined to participate in person.

Corcoran is expected to run for governor this year and Scott is expected to challenge Nelson.

The Florida Democratic Party accused Scott of “hiding.” Scott is widely expected to challenge U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in November. Nelson, who supports gun restrictions, professed admiration for Rubio’s decision to attend as a way to take jabs at Scott for missing the event.

“My colleague, Senator Rubio and I have a good relationship; we get a lot of stuff done together. And I want you to know that I told him before we came out here tonight that he had guts coming here, when there is no representative from the state of Florida. Our governor did not come here, Governor Scott, but Marco did,” Nelson said. His mention of Scott drew boos.

Nelson said he grew up on a ranch with guns, still owns guns, and still hunts. “But an AK-47 and an AK-15 is not for hunting, it’s for killing,” Nelson said.

The senator said it was a mistake on the part of Democrats, when they controlled the House, Senate and the presidency in 2009 and 2010 not to tackle guns. He said it wasn’t until later, during the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that the need for action became so apparent.

And he tempered expectations about what would happen in the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

“The hard reality is that there are not a majority of senators, primarily the ones that have been supported financially by the NRA, there’s not a majority of senators that are going to be willing to do a lot,” Nelson said,

Rubio headed into the event acutely aware that much of the focus would be on him. Like many Republicans, he’s received substantial NRA support over the years, and like many Republicans, he’s said that gun restrictions wouldn’t be a cure to prevent mass shootings.

Late Tuesday night on Twitter, he criticized an editorial that included him in a list of politicians dodging a discussion of gun control. “Dodging? I’m only GOP at @CNN townhall & I’m fairly certain gun control will come up. So I call BS,” he wrote. He praised as a “truly insightful must read” an article reporting he’s facing criticism from liberals that have long opposed him.

At the Town Hall, Rubio said he supports universal background checks, raising the minimum age to purchase guns to 21 and banning bump stocks that allow rifles to fire more rapidly. He also said he’s rethinking his position on allowing high-capacity magazines that allow more shots to be fired before needing to be reloaded.

“While it may not stop an attack, it may save lives in the attack,” Rubio said.

In his introduction, Rubio said he hoped that the discussion stemming from the Stoneman Douglas shootings would change the way politics is conducted in the U.S., changing for a discourse in which people can’t have a civil discussion about issues.

The audience wasn’t impressed. “I knew he was going to defend the NRA, just like Trump did,” Stoneman Douglas senior Zachary Stark said after the town hall. Stark said he was disappointed, but not surprised by Rubio’s comments. “He honestly did us no good showing up.”

Christian Schneider, a teacher at Pembroke Pines Charter School, said Rubio needs to stop taking money from the NRA. “”I’m ashamed that he’s a senator from our state,” Schneider said,

During the televised forum, Ryan Schachter, whose brother Alex was killed at Stoneman Douglas, asked what Deutch would say to students who are worried about being killed at school. Deutch said he would start by working to “make sure that assault weapons are illegal in every part of this country.”

Deutch also rejected the notion from some that it’s too soon after the shooting to discuss gun control. They say “it’s too soon to talk about getting weapons of war out of our communities. It is not too soon. It is too late for the 17 lives that were lost. It is too late for the grieving families, too late for the injured, too late for the 3,300 survivors.”

Turning to Rubio and Nelson, Deutch said the politicians should be judged on their actions, not on their words at the town hall. “The folks in our communities don’t want words, they don’t want thoughts and prayers, they want actions.”

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