Conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday said Democrats are politicizing the mass shooting at a Florida high school last week, according to a report in Mediaite.
"What is the media trying to do with our emotions by hyping the students and their protests and the shooting in Florida?" Limbaugh asked on his radio show, "The Rush Limbaugh Show."
"What are they really trying to do? What are they upset about? What do they want us to be upset about? What is it that is unacceptable about all of this? And it is the death of the students, is it not? That's the outrage. All of the students who died, and by extension, others who are dying after getting shot?"
Democrats have renewed their call for gun control after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day, killing 17 people. Cruz, a former student at Douglas, had obtained at least 10 firearms, all of them rifles, in the last year or so.
Many Douglas students have spoken out on cable news and in op-eds, calling on elected officials to act and prevent mas shootings.
Limbaugh, though, questioned whether it was "hatred for guns" behind the push by Democrats.
"Death is the thing that has everybody upset, right? Unnecessary, needless wanton death. Is that the animating emotion here? … Or is it hatred for guns that is animating the passion and the emotion here and the energy from the Drive-Bys?" he said.
"If it's death, if the media, and by extension the Democrats, the American left, if they are really, really just beyond the pale with grief and sorrow of the deaths of these kids then why don't we suggest banning the wheel — you know how many kids die in automobile accidents? You know, according to the FBI, knives kill far more people than rifles in America and it's not even close. Recent stats from 2016 show that knives kill five times as many people as rifles in 2016."
"That's why this is politics," he added.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.