Arrested Parkland dad slams 'absurdity' of 'gun-loving' Congress

The father of a 17-year-old who was killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting on Tuesday slammed “members of Congress who grovel at the feet of the gun lobby.”

Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was among 14 students and three faculty members killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, blasted lawmakers who have stood in the way of tougher gun laws in an opinion piece in The Daily Beast.

Oliver was arrested Thursday after he was removed from a House hearing on gun laws after he and his wife Patricia clashed with Republican lawmakers. He has been shown in photos being pinned to the ground and restrained.

Oliver and Patricia in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting founded Change the Ref, a group that promotes awareness about mass shootings and works to reduce the influence of the NRA and gun manufacturers.

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The shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville Monday that killed six people underscores “our reasons for disrupting a congressional hearing—and our commitment to do it again, if necessary—is self-evident.”

“There’s a reason why the gun homicide rate in the U.S. is more than 20 times higher than in Europe or Australia,” Oliver said.

“The rest of the world knows that to keep people safe, you must strongly regulate guns. But in the U.S., gun companies sell military-style assault weapons to civilians, even teenagers. Firearms can be sold without even minimal checks in “private sales.” And there is no limit on the number of guns a person can buy.”

That the House subcommittee hearing the Olivers attended last week was called: “ATF’s Assault on the Second Amendment: When is Enough Enough?” reflects the absurdity of America’s approach to gun laws, Oliver argues.

“The House of Representatives did not think ‘enough was enough’ when 19 schoolchildren and two adults were killed with an assault weapon at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, or when almost 100,000 people lost their lives to gunfire in our country over the past two years,” Oliver said.

“But at this hearing, they cast the gun industry and gun owners as victims of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—a take so absurd that it would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.”

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