Army veteran Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) appeared on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday to address the Parkland shooting and explain his position in favor of banning the AR-15 rifle, a rare stance among GOP members.
“We have to do something about this. We have to protect our communities,” Mast said during an interview with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.
Mast, who represents Florida’s 18th Congressional District and once lived in Parkland, knew some of the victims of the Feb. 14 school shooting in which a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School used an AR-15 rifle to kill 17. After the shooting, Mast wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he broke with fellow Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA) by calling for a ban on AR-15 rifles.
“I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill children I swore to defend,” Mast wrote in the op-ed.