Ex-GOP lawmaker: Vote Republicans out of office if you want mass shootings stopped

Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) on Wednesday argued American voters must flip the House of Representatives to a Democratic majority if they want Congress to address gun control in the wake of a Florida high school shooting that left at least 17 people dead and others injured.

“And so if this is the issue that defines your ideology as a voter, there are two things I would suggest tonight. First, flip the House. Flip the House,” Jolly told “CNN Tonight.” “Republicans are not going to do a single thing after this shooting we saw today. But I would also offer to Democrats, work for incremental wins.”

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Jolly, who left office last January after losing a reelection bid, argued Democrats should work with the law enforcement community on gun control legislation.

The former Florida congressman said “Republicans will never do anything on gun control,” referencing the shooting at a baseball field last year that left House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) seriously injured.

“The idea of gun policy in the Republican Party is to try to get a speaking slot at the NRA and prove to that constituency that you’re further right than generations past of Republicans have been on guns,” he said.

At least 17 people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a gunman opened fire at a high school in South Florida on Wednesday.

President Trump and many other lawmakers on Wednesday offered their thoughts and prayers to the victims.

Multiple Democratic lawmakers have called for Congress to take action on gun violence.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on the Senate floor that mass shootings are “a consequence of our inaction.”

“This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America — this epidemic of mass slaughter, this scourge of school shooting after school shooting.”

“It only happens here not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction,” Murphy said. “We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”