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Deerfield Beach, FL — Oliver Larkin released a statement on the 13th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and first night of Hanukkah in response to yesterday’s mass shootings at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and in Sydney, Australia:

“College students, Jewish worshippers, and every single human being deserves the security and freedom to be safe from gun violence,” said Larkin. “Yesterday’s targeting of college students at Brown University during their final exams and the antisemitic attack on Jewish Australians celebrating their faith on the first night of Hanukkah stain our collective humanity. Congress must pass universal background checks, ban assault rifles, and take on the gun lobby to ensure our schools, our college campuses, and our communities of faith are safe.”

Larkin noted the impact of the Sandy Hook anniversary and yesterday’s violence for residents of Florida’s 23rd district, including Zoe Weissman, a 20-year-old Brown University student and Parkland resident who was on campus yesterday and in middle school next door to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, as well as the many Jewish South Floridians celebrating Hanukkah and fearing attacks such as those in Sydney, Boulder, Colorado, and synagogues in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Poway, California. Larkin further condemned the antisemitic conflation of Israel’s actions with those of the Jewish community, or the conflation of the Jewish faith with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza or apartheid in the West Bank.

“Acts of terrorism targeting Jewish people practicing their faith for Hanukkah is the very definition of antisemitism," Larkin added. “Holding the Jewish community responsible for the actions of the Israeli government or justifying the Israeli government’s actions in the name of all Jewish people is antisemitic and intolerable. I condemn these acts of violence and commend Ahmed El Ahmad, a Muslim man, for risking his life to save his Jewish neighbors. Religious freedom is fundamental to what it means to be an American. Every person of every faith deserves that freedom, and it is our duty to uphold that ideal, to confront injustice and hate, in the United States and abroad, and to ensure that every community, from college campuses to houses of worship, are free from the scourge of gun violence.”

For more information, visit www.OliverForCongress.com and follow the campaign on TikTok, X, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, and Facebook.

Media Contact:
Zack Bofshever
954-439-6267
press@oliverforcongress.com

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