The father of a student killed in the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, Fla., took Republican leaders in Washington to task on Friday as the nation grappled with a deadly school shooting in Texas.
Speaking by phone to MSNBC, Fred Guttenberg accused President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) of embracing the National Rifle Association (NRA) and pushing school safety to the wayside.
“We have a president who stands up and embraces a gun lobby, the NRA, and says you should actually feel good about them,” Guttenberg said of Trump, who spoke at the NRA’s annual national meeting earlier this month. “We have Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan who sit on their you-know-what and have no spine and won’t even talk about this, and it keeps happening.”
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“Here’s what I predict: This November, this will be the No. 1 voting issue,” he added. “And if you’re wrong on this issue, we’re going to fire you, because enough is enough is enough.”
Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime Guttenberg was killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has become an outspoken advocate for tighter gun restrictions since the attack in South Florida.
His latest comments came hours after a gunman opened fire at Santa Fe High School near Houston, killing 10 people and injuring 10 others, making it the latest school shooting to roil the country.
Anti-gun violence activists have led an aggressive push in recent months to force lawmakers in D.C. and state houses across the country to implement new gun control measures, pointing to the rash of mass shootings in recent decades.
Guttenberg told MSNBC that, by failing to act, lawmakers are creating “a generation of students who don’t want to go to school.”
“These shootings can happen anywhere and everywhere, because we have irresponsible gun ownership, we have irresponsible gun laws,” Guttenberg said.