Parkland Mayor: Banning Assault Rifles Could Save a Life

‘What is the positive impact of having legislation that stops assault rifles?’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: 
HUNSCHOFSKY: "Hello, Mr. President. Thank you for having us. I’m Christine. I’m the mayor of parkland. We have a great city. It’s one of the safest cities in America. The fact that this happened in our city means it can happen anywhere. We are blessed that where very close knit, oriented city. Our community is coming together. We lost 17 lives, but the ripple effects throughout the community are devastating. I spent the last week going to funerals. Friends of mine lost their children. We have to at some point care enough and be strong enough to come up with solutions. I hope we will. If I might, I had two parents that lost children this past week text me some of their thoughts, if I might share them with you. Thank you. I spoke to Jennifer and Tony Montalto. They buried their daughter, Gina, yesterday. And their comments were — Tony is an airline pilot. He said he supports the second Amendment but he does not believe there’s a need for assault rifles. He said that the FBI, there were signs missed and reminded him of 9-11. So we have to work on making sure that our protocols are in place so that people don’t slip through the cracks literally in this case. We talked about the red flag laws. There’s a little progress being made in Florida now on the red flag laws, which is when somebody shows signs of hurting themselves or someone else, you can take their gun away from them. Fred Guttenberg, the service for his daughter, Jamie, was last week on Friday. He would like the administration to publicly acknowledge the role of guns. These two parents talked about guns and they’re absolutely lots of areas that — where there’s room for improvement. Lots of areas from mental health, from teacher training, but also part of that is also the gun issue. So it’s not that it’s just those and not the gun. It’s all of them. In the debate world, the high school debate world, the kids talk about when they bring up legislation, you want to have impacts. You’re not bringing up legislation that does haven’t a positive impact. What is the positive impact of having legislation that stops assault rifles? Bans assault rifles? It could save a life. That needs to be a priority in any case. When we talk about rights, so we have the right for free speech. Free speech in any way endangers someone, it gets restricted. I think — I appreciate we’re coming here to listen and I appreciate that we’re coming here to look at all different perspectives because we need to be action and solution oriented."

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