The NRA's poster boy with his A+ rating, and recipient of over $3mil in cash blood money from them, has been trying to gut DC's gun laws for years. After Parkland, the difference in his actions and his rhetoric has grown even more stark.
Source: Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was one week after the fatal shootings at a Parkland, Florida, high school, and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio was looking to show solidarity with an angry crowd of parents and students in his home state. He told them — and a national television audience — that 18-year-olds should not be able to buy a rifle and said, “I will support a law that takes that right away.”
About 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) north, District of Columbia officials could only shake their heads in disbelief. The city already had a law barring 18-year-olds from buying rifles, yet Rubio was the main senator pushing legislation to end that ban, as well as D.C.’s prohibition of assault weapons.
“Rubio’s gun bill should be a public embarrassment as well as a personal embarrassment to him,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s nonvoting delegate in Congress.
So what's the little shit esteemed U.S. Senator from Florida actually been doing?
Rubio introduced the bill, known as the Second Amendment Enforcement Act, in 2015 and again in 2017. According to the NRA website, Rubio has an A-plus rating. Among its list of Rubio accomplishments is that he “sponsored legislation that would repeal Washington, D.C.’s draconian gun control laws and restore the right of self-defense to law-abiding individuals in our nation’s capital.”
Norton said she’s been fighting off similar bills in Congress for years. Another one, sponsored by Virginia Republican Tom Garrett, exists in the House. Neither of them has much chance of passing because the Republican majorities in Congress wouldn’t hold together on such a divisive issue, she said.
“The worst part is why he did it. Why would a senator from Florida take on this issue?” Norton asked. “He’s coming back every year for his NRA payoff.”
