After the Nashville school shooting tragedy, a South Florida freshman congressman, Democrat Jared Moskowitz of Parkland, is making waves as he pushes for gun safety and school hardening laws.
Wednesday, Moskowitz got into a debate on the House floor with Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, which has been widely seen on social media.
Greene said schools need more armed people on campus, and blamed Democrats for making schools gun-free zones, even though the vote on that issue was nearly unanimous in Congress and it happened in the George H.W. Bush administration.
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“There was no good guy with a gun to protect those kids at school,” Greene said. “You wanna know why the shooter is dead in Nashville? The trans shooter? You wanna know why? Because a good guy with a gun killed that woman.”
“Did the good guys with a gun stop six people from getting murdered? No,” Moskowitz retorted, adding that he’s always supported having school resource officers on every school campus, which is the law in Florida.
“Kids being murdered in school, schools being turned into slaughterhouses, that’s an indictment on elected officials not being willing to do the right thing,” Moskowitz said via Zoom Thursday. “We can do something here, we just got to find people who have courage.”
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In his back-and-forth with Greene, Moskowitz accused Republicans of letting the assault weapons ban expire in 2004, even though both parties allowed it to sunset. He pointed out that since the ban expired, there’s been an epidemic of mass shootings in which AR15s are the weapon of choice. Moskowitz also blamed Republicans for loosening gun laws which allow mentally unstable people to buy guns legally. For example, the Nashville shooter legally purchased seven guns including two AR15s.
Moskowitz, a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the former head of emergency management in Florida in the DeSantis Administration, said Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act is a model for the nation. It was signed into law by then-governor Rick Scott, a Republican.
“What we got done in Florida would be huge step, raising the age to 21, mandatory three-day waiting period, red flag laws which by the way in Florida have been used 9,000 times, hundred of millions of dollars for mental health and hundreds of millions of dollars for school resource officers and school hardening, that would make a huge difference,” Moskowitz said in our Zoom interview.
He said since he’s been in Congress, Moskowitz said House Republicans have called no hearings on gun violence, but have talked a lot about drag queens and book bans.
“You guys are worried about banning books? Dead kids can’t read!” Moskowitz said to Greene.
In our interview, Moskowitz said he’s always willing to pursue bipartisan action.
“Look, this place up here in Washington is like an off-Broadway show, but when the lights are off and we’re no longer performing, we’ve got to get in a room and figure out where we can find some common ground,” Moskowitz said. “I think at some point, the damn is going to break on this issue.”
One of his points of emphasis is that this fight is all about mitigation. There’s no magic law, Moskowitz says, which will stop mass shootings, but taking incremental steps like Florida did will save lives.
