Marco Rubio’s rollercoaster gun debate in Florida

CNN’s televised town hall meeting on guns was held a week after a 19-year-old walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 people with an AR-15 style weapon.

In the first panel, Rubio, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., faced students and teachers who survived the shooting, as well as parents of children who didn’t.

Rubio was hit right away by Fred Guttenberg, the father of a Jaime Guttenberg, who died in the shooting.

“Your comments this week and those of our president have been pathetically weak,” Guttenberg said as the crowd cheered. The grieving father demanded he answer whether guns were the main factor in the incident and whether he would work to “do something about guns.”

But the crowd turned on him when he said tougher gun controls wouldn’t have stopped the shooting. Guttenberg would have none of it.

“My daughter, running down the hallway at Marjory Stoneman Douglas was shot in the back,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Rubio said.

“With an assault weapon, the weapon of choice,” Guttenberg said.

“Yes, sir.”

“It is too easy to get, it is a weapon of war. The fact that you can’t stand with everybody in this building and say that, I’m sorry,” Guttenberg said to a standing ovation.

The crowd had to be asked to stop booing before Rubio answered. As Rubio explained that it’s too easy for people to get around gun control laws, the crowd grew restless again, and when he suggested blocking gun sales to mentally disturbed people, he lost the crowd.

Rubio lost points again just moments later, when he was confronted by a student who survived the shooting about whether he would keep taking donations from the NRA. Rubio has reportedly received more than $1 million from the group over his career.

The student asked Rubio three times, and each time, Rubio declined to answer. He instead argued, as some in the crowd tried to shout him down, that he doesn’t bend his agenda just because he gets money from certain groups.

“The influence of these groups comes not from money,” Rubio said. “The influence comes from the millions of people that agree with the agenda, the millions of Americans who support the NRA and who support gun rights.”

Rubio won some moments too. He was praised by Nelson for appearing at all.

“I told him before we came out here tonight that he had guts coming here,” Nelson said.

Rubio also won applause for saying he’s open to working with Deutch on a gun bill, for saying people should be 21 and not 18 before they’re allowed to buy a rifle, and for saying he might be able to agree to limits on the number of rounds legal gun magazines can hold.

But some of those answers drew criticism from the media that Rubio appeared to be flip-flopping. One CBS reporter said the sudden shift in his position raises the question of whether he will actually work toward those goals.

Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger at the Washington Post, discounted Rubio’s remarks by saying he is “infamous” for changing his positions.

More fundamentally, some in the media noted how easily a teenager was able to dismantle Rubio in front of a live audience.