An activist group is trolling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) with a “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”-style protest urging him to act on gun control.
Activist group Avaaz placed the billboards, which are on the sides of three trucks, outside Rubio’s headquarters in Miami in the days following Wednesday’s shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead and at least 14 injured.
“Slaughtered in school, and still no gun control?” the billboards read. “How come, Marco Rubio?”
In the Oscar-nominated film “Three Billboards,” a grieving mother rents out the title objects to call attention to local police’s handling of her daughter’s rape and murder.
Rubio said on the Senate floor Thursday that gun control would not have prevented the shooting because potential shooters “will find a way to get the gun to do it.”
He also warned Wednesday against “jumping to conclusions” after the shooting.
“I think it’s important to know all of that before you jump to conclusions that there was some law that we could have passed that would have prevented it,” he said. “And there may be, but shouldn’t we at least know the facts?”
{mosads}Avaaz President Emma Ruby-Sachs said in a statement that the billboards are in response to Rubio having “never attempted” to reform the state’s “notoriously lax gun laws.” The suspected shooter reportedly purchased the AR-15 used in Wednesday’s shooting legally a year ago.
“Today we take the streets asking ourselves: how come, Rubio?” she said. “The Senator has taken fire across the country for his toothless response to the shooting, calling it ‘inexplicable’. We call that ‘inexcusable.’”
Ruby-Sachs also noted that Rubio is “one of the highest recipients of [National Rifle Association] NRA contributions and has received an A+ rating from the NRA.”
Democratic lawmakers have upped their calls for gun control in response to the shooting.