Another day, another new low from MAGA extremists in politics. On Sunday, Florida representative Brian Mast sat for an interview with WPTV and faced difficult questions, including one highlighting his flip-flop on assault weapons in civilian hands after the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL in 2018. Despite Mast’s previous statements supporting an assault weapon ban, Mast now argues that seeing “areas of our country that have been taken over by millions of illegal immigrants” is grounds to completely reverse his position.
Set aside Mast’s exposing himself as a self-serving opportunist who only thinks critically about issues like gun violence when it hits home. Set aside the ridiculousness of claiming that entire swathes of America have been “taken over.” Set aside the fact that government data shows that immigrants commit less crime than native citizens. Set aside the fact that Florida still offers concealed carry permits to cover the kind of self-defense scenarios Mast invokes. This half-hearted explanation is even more MAGA fearmongering to turn Americans against each other.
Try as he may, there’s no good way for Mast to spin his comments as anything other than blatant anti-immigrant hate. Are immigration violations really grounds for posses of vigilante citizens to roam the streets of America’s cities, carrying semi-automatic rifles with politicians like Mast encouraging them to shoot first and ask questions later? This proposal has much in common with Mast’s other idea to get people to retire later and not use up Social Security money, or like Texas’s abortion ban encouraging people to rat on their neighbors: Republicans rile up their base with extreme rhetoric and create people willing to enforce their policies so that way they can remain blameless when the worst happens. They stoke culture wars and gin up outrage, begging extremists to do their bidding for them so they can deny culpability when the worst inevitably happens.
Even worse, Mast’s comment coincides with the state attorney general not intervening on a challenge to Florida’s ban on open carry of firearms, despite having previously defended policies like Ron DeSantis’s ploy to decriminalize murdering protesters. The message to Floridians is clear: Republicans actively want their followers to use as much force as they want against anyone they want for any reason they want. Given how intensely Mast threw a temper tantrum over the language used by Democratic senators about Donald Trump, by his own logic, Mast has blood on his hands the moment a MAGA extremist guns down an immigrant in cold blood.
This is why Thomas Witkop needs to send Mast packing. Especially in south Florida, immigrants bring incredible people and ideas into America’s communities and make them stronger. They deserve the chance to build a future here and join the great American story like millions of Americans before them. Thomas Witkop will fight to protect not just immigrants, but all American communities from crime and violence. They don’t deserve flip-flopping politicians threatening them with vigilantes, AR-15s in hand, in America’s streets.
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