Veteran and Congressional Candidate Max Rose on Solving the Gun Violence Epidemic

Max Rose is the first post- 9/11 combat vet to run for office in NYC and is running to represent Staten Island in Congress. The district he’s running for voted for Obama twice and Trump in 2016.

“I knock on a door recently, as I love to do in Staten Island and throughout my district, and a cop answers and he says, you know, my kids are always used to being afraid when I go to work. They’re afraid that I’m gonna be the victim of gun violence, but now they’re afraid to go to school,” he explained. “And in part, that has to do with the fact that there’s an epidemic of mass shootings all too often which involve an AR-15.”

Rose says he knows the weapon “intimately” and carried a variant of it in combat. He believes that AR-15s shouldn’t be sold in the country, and that more thorough background checks should be enforced.

“We need federal legislation that mandates universal background checks, background checks for a second-hand sale, for an internet sale, for a gun fair sale, it does not matter,” he said. “If you are a criminal, if you have a mental health issue in this country, you should not be able to buy a weapon.”

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