Thread by @atrupar

Huge applause from gun forum crowd when @SenBillNelson mentions banning AR-15s. Gonna be a tough audience for Rubio

A few boos from #StudentsStandUp audience when @marcorubio is introduced

Rubio tells father of slain student who challenged him to admit that "guns were a factor" in last week's mass shooting that he is going to "repeat what I said" -- there are more factors than gun control. #StudentsDemandAction

The crowd is not here for Marco Rubio's defense of AR-15s. Tons of boos. #StudentsDemandAction

Marco is having a rough time

Rubio scores an own goal when he says the assault weapons ban "would literally ban every semi-automatic rifle that's sold in America" and the crowd erupts in cheers

Rubio is applauded when he says he's against arming teachers -- an idea President Trump floated earlier Wednesday

Marco Rubio tells Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Cameron Kasky he "supports the 2nd amendment" after he's asked if he'll pledge not to accept any more money from the NRA.

Crowd isn't happy.

Rubio's defense of continuing to accept NRA donations is that "there's money on both sides of every issue in America" and that donors to him "buy into his agenda," not the other way around

Rubio offers a concession. He tells student he's now open to "looking at magazine clip size" -- i.e., regulating semi-automatic firearms so they're less deadly -- in wake of Parkland shooting.

After student Emma Gonzalez asks her a question, NRA spokesperson @DLoesch receives some boos. She tells students the NRA is against "insane monsters" having guns.

"And I'm not just fighting for my kids, I'm fighting for you. I'm fighting for you," she says, as boos percolate.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel gets a huge ovation after he tells Dana Loesch that "you're not standing up for [these students] until you say, I want less weapons."

Dana Loesch's talking point that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz should never have been able to obtain his AR-15 legally because he's "crazy" is not going over well with the #StudentsDemandAction audience

Oof. Loesch gets big boos after she tells high school students that they should be able to buy AR-15s because otherwise they might get raped.

.@DLoesch is having a rough time

My God. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch is now publicly attacking Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel for allegedly dropping the ball and not stopping Nikolas Cruz before the Parkland shooting.

Israel is taking Loesch's insinuations calmly.

NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch is out here lecturing the mother of a teacher who was slain last week by a gunman with an AR-15 that actually, the Founding Fathers intended to protect AR-15s with the 2nd amendment.

Loesch is booed off the stage after she closes the CNN forum by arguing that mass shootings are a law enforcement problem, not a guns problem

After CNN town hall, Marco Rubio dismisses audience of survivors as ‘well outside the mainstream’ thinkprogress.org/marco-rubio-cn…

Rubio dismisses Florida town hall's roaring approval for an assault weapons ban as a fringe view thinkprogress.org/marco-rubio-cn…

Rubio told #CNNTownHall that an assault weapons ban is a 'valid position to hold.'

But when Rubio was no longer in a room with survivors with survivors, he changed his tune. thinkprogress.org/marco-rubio-cn…

NRA CEO LaPierre says "the elites don't care one wit about school children. If they truly cared what they would do is protect them. For them, it's not a safety issue. It's a political issue"

Adds, "laws don't stop the scourge of gang violence & drug crime that savages Baltimore"

In effort to get more guns in schools, LaPierre says "any American school that needs immediate professional consultation and help with organizing and defining these solutions [i.e. armed guards] should call the national rifle association school shield program."

LOL- LaPierre takes aim at Obama, says Dem Party "is now infested with saboteurs (?) who don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in the constitution, don't believe in our freedom, & don't believe in America as we know it"

@keithellison gets huge boos when he's name-dropped

LaPierre takes aim at the FBI: "I can understand a few bad apples in an organization as large as the FBI, but what is hard to understand is why no one at the FBI Stood up and called BS on its rogue leadership. I mean, really, where was the systemic resistance?"

LaPierre says "we live in the socialistic age of the art of the smear," claims liberals "love to smear."

"Racist, misogynist, sexist- this is what they scream to permanently hang on their targets & create a growing segment of victims, b/c socialism feeds off manipulated victims"

LaPierre: "Socialists love to make lists, and especially lists that can be used to deny citizens their basic freedoms. And now some people are calling for a new list of anyone -- anyone who has sought mental health care to deny them their 2nd amendment rights."

NRA's LaPierre strikes nihilistic tone about possibility of preventing gun violence, says he doesn't expect problems w/background check system to be fixed.

"Instead, what they will do is they'll keep coming after the NRA... when another monster slips through the cracks."

LaPierre is very indignant that anyone would suggest a person should have to be interviewed to make sure they're sane before the buy an AR-15.

"Who is going to conduct that interview? And what will they ask? That is the challenge we as a free society face."

Hyperbole much? NRA's LaPierre claims "it's just a short hop" from to registering guns into a database "to the systematic destruction of our most basic freedoms in this country"

LOL -- LaPierre is butthurt that "on college campuses The Communist Manifesto is one of the most frequently assigned texts. Karl Marx is now the most assigned economist."

LaPierre closes by calling for schools to become like military checkpoints.

"Every day young children are being dropped off at schools that are virtually wide open, soft targets for anyone bent on mass murder... Schools must be the most hardened targets in this country."