One of the highlights of CNN's town hall on guns came when Cameron Kasky, a student survivor of the Florida school shooting, asked Republican senator Sen. Marco Rubio "Can you tell me you won't take a single donation from the NRA?"
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Cheers erupted in the crowd, a gathering in Sunrise, Florida, that included parents of victims, student survivors and other community officials from Parkland.
Rubio didn't answer yes or no, other than to say that "people buy into my agenda".
The town hall was riveting and even raucous at points. The news network had held a town hall on guns in 2016 with President Barack Obama, but this one was different, matching the raw emotion of last week's tragedy with the Washington politicians who set the agenda. It was a sign that the response to this latest mass shooting is enduring, and a prelude to a student-led march on Washington scheduled for March 24.
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the school shooting, drew big cheers when he told Rubio that he thought Rubio's comments in the past week and those of President Donald Trump were "pathetically weak".
Rubio stood with a stone face and listened.
"Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in the school this week," Gutenberg said. "Look at me and tell me that you accept it and you will work with us and do something about guns."
Rubio responded that the "problems we are facing here today cannot be solved by gun laws alone".
He was joined by Florida's other senator, Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and one of its members of the House, Ted Deutch, another Democrat. As much as Rubio was put on the spot, Nelson credited him to attending the event, unlike Governor Rick Scott.
Rubio said he would support raising the age limit on the AR-15 rifle, the one used in the shooting, to 21, and that he was changing his position on banning the use of high-capacity magazines. But he challenged the notion of banning all assault weapons, saying that the problem is that the past law, which was allowed to expire in 2004, was full of loopholes.
Emma Gonzalez, a senior at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, whose speech over the weekend blasting inaction has gone viral, was given the first question to Dana Loesch, a spokeswoman for the NRA, and asked her whether it should be harder to obtain semiautomatic weapons.
Loesch turned to keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable via background checks. "Do you guys want to stop mentally unstable individuals from getting firearms?" Loesch asked.
Loesch refrained, however, from trying to turn attention to gun violence in movies and TV shows, which the NRA did in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012.
Australian Associated Press
