Rubio retracts his slight shift on guns

After the killings in Parkland, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said he was willing to deal with the “gun part” of the debate over how to stop mass shootings.

He said it on the floor of the Senate the day after a gunman used an AR-15 militarystyle rifle to kill 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

He said it again during media interviews, as parents in Parkland and Coral Springs made burial plans for their children.

But when it came time to walk the talk, the proposed reforms Rubio announced this week largely skip the “gun part.”

Rubio calls for improving school security, strengthening background checks and prosecuting more people who try to fool background checks. He also supports gunviolence restraining orders, which would let family members and law enforcement officers petition a judge to take guns away from — and prevent their sale to — people who pose a threat.

But missing from his plan is any call to raise the minimum age for buying assaultstyle rifles from 18 to 21, no matter that he told the CNN town hall gathering: “I think that’s the right thing to do.”

Neither does he call for banning highcapacity magazines, like the ones that allowed the Parkland shooter to fire so many bullets so fast. At the town hall, he said “evidence in this case” suggested such a ban might have saved lives.

Back in Washington, Rubio said he found no “widespread support” for those reforms.

In other words, the going got tough, so he gave up.

Instead, Rubio reverted to stale talking points. He said any reform cannot “unnecessarily or unfairly” infringe on the Second Amendment right of law-abiding adults “to protect themselves, hunt or participate in recreational shooting.”

Heaven knows, we wouldn’t want to protect our kids by trampling on someone’s right to target shoot.

Soon after the town hall where Rubio suggested he was willing to consider some changes, he defended assault weapons on Twitter and criticized his critics. “We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. (And) worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease.”

He also retweeted a message that said banning semi-automatic weapons might have been popular at the town hall, “but it is a position well outside the mainstream.”

Actually, 62 percent of Floridians support a ban on assault weapons, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

We’re not talking about banning all semi-automatic weapons, which automatically load the next bullet, but require a trigger pull to fire each round.

We’re talking about banning semi-automatic, military-style rifles that deliver devastatingly lethal, highvelocity bullets and were the weapon of choice in Parkland; Orlando; Las Vegas; San Bernardino, California; Aurora, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut; and Sutherland Springs, Texas.

AR-15-style rifles fire bullets “three times faster than, and impart more than three times the energy of, a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun,” says Broward Health radiologist Heather Sher, who helped treat Parkland victims.

People with injuries from a semi-automatic handgun can often be saved, but that wasn’t the case in Parkland, Sher wrote in a column first published by The Atlantic. Organ damage in one victim “looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer,” she wrote. “The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different; they travel at higher velocity and are far more lethal.”

Rubio says that a ban wouldn’t work because “loopholes” would keep many rifles legal. Closing the loopholes, he tweeted, would mean having “to ban virtually all models of semi-auto rifles.”

He also notes that while the proposed ban would outlaw about 200 guns, it would keep more than 2,000 similar rifles legal.

But a partial solution is better than none. And if the proposal isn’t perfect, let him suggest amendments.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson supports a federal ban on military-style weapons. So should Rubio, our junior senator.

Voters sent Rubio to Washington to represent our interests, not throw up his hands because the going got tough.

Rubio received a lot of credit for showing up to the town hall and listening to grieving families. But actions speak louder than words.

And given his failure to follow through, it should come as no surprise that the week ended with his approval ratings at an alltime low.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Elana Simms, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.

Sen. Bill Nelson supports a federal ban on military-style weapons. So should Rubio, our junior senator. Voters sent Rubio to Washington to represent our interests, not throw up his hands because the going got tough.

Rubio