- A Florida congressional candidate disrupted a live taping of the Rubin Report featuring Gov. Ron DeSantis.
- "Floridians are dying. We need help!" yelled Maxwell Frost, a former organizer with March for Our Lives.
Florida congressional candidate Maxwell Alejandro Frost and a group of activists disrupted a live event featuring Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Thursday night, yelling that "Floridians are dying!" while demanding action on gun violence.
Frost, a leading candidate in the Democratic primary for Florida's Orlando-area 10th congressional district, was promptly escorted from the room as DeSantis repeatedly declared that "no one wants to hear" from him.
DeSantis was speaking with Dave Rubin, a conservative activist and media personality, when he was interrupted by Frost.
"Governor DeSantis, we're losing 100 people a day due to gun violence," said Frost. "We need action on gun violence!"
A video shared by Frost on Twitter shows security officials quickly escorting Frost out of the auditorium.
In addition to Frost, a few other Florida-based activists disrupted the Orlando event.
The protest follows several mass shootings in recent weeks, including at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
It also comes after Beto O'Rourke — a former congressman and Democratic presidential candidate who's now running for governor of Texas — made a similar disruption during a briefing by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials last week following the Uvalde shooting.
Insider recently spoke with Frost, a 25-year-old former March for Our Lives organizer who's running to replace Democratic Rep. Val Demings in Congress. If elected, he would be the first Generation Z member of Congress.
DeSantis is up for reelection this year and is widely considered to be a likely 2024 presidential candidate.
On Friday, DeSantis held an event about the Special Olympics in Orlando and took several questions from reporters but none asked about gun policy. Before Thursday he was notably absent from live events ever since the shooting in Uvalde.
On Thursday, DeSantis signed the state budget publicly in a ceremony in The Villages, a Florida retirement community, on Thursday but didn't take questions afterward. One budget item he vetoed would have funded 83 positions to process and review concealed carry permits.
The funding request had come from Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat who is running to unseat DeSantis in November.
When DeSantis was running for his first term as governor, in 2018, he said he would have vetoed Florida's gun-control law passed after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
His predecessor, GOP Gov. Rick Scott, who is now a US Senator, signed the bill into law. It raised the minimum age to buy rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21, banned bump stocks that allow firearms to work like automatic weapons, and required a three-day waiting period for long guns.
DeSantis said in April that he wanted Florida to become a constitutional carry state. Under current state law people have to receive a concealed weapons permit to carry hidden guns in public. A constitutional carry state would allow people who legally own firearms to carry it in public — hidden or not — without training, registration, or government licensing.
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