Gun control groups throw support to Maxwell Frost in CD 10

Image via Maxwell Alejandro Frost campaign.

A number of gun control activists have rallied around congressional candidate Maxwell Alejandro Frost’s candidacy in Florida’s 10th Congressional District.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting in 2018, was among those endorsing Frost. So were Brady: United Against Gun Violence, Community Justice Action Fund and the Newtown Action Alliance.

Groups like Brady included Frost in a series of high-profile endorsements.

Frost survived a shooting in a downtown Orlando crowd. He later worked closely with survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting on the national March For Our Lives political movement, and has become a national activist regarding gun policy.

Frost said it’s important that voices in the movement translate their own stories into political action.

“As a gun violence survivor myself and the former March for Our Lives Organizing Director, it is a great honor to have so many incredible gun violence prevention organizations and advocates behind me in this campaign,” he said. “In Congress, I will work day and night to help create a world where people no longer have to fear gun violence, where students no longer have to hide under their desks for active shooter drills, and where we can put an end to the everyday gun violence that plagues communities of color.”

The gun control groups cheered that work.

“Brady PAC is proud to stand with Maxwell Frost in his candidacy to represent Florida’s 10th Congressional District,” stated Jason Pressberg, Brady PAC Executive Director. “Maxwell Frost has stood on the frontlines of the fight to end gun violence and represents the voices and vision of the next generation that has grown up traumatized by gun violence. His leadership, vision and tenacity are desperately needed in the halls of Congress.”

Gregory Neal Jackson Jr., executive director of Community Justice Action Fund, similarly praised Frost’s work.

“Maxwell is a gun violence survivor who has spent 10 years advocating for, organizing, and lobbying government officials to pass common-sense gun legislation,” Jackson said. “We’re proud to stand behind him and are ready to work hard to get him elected to Congress.”

Frost, for his part, stressed how the work of fellow survivors is what drove his political involvement in the first place.

“Days after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook, I flew up to D.C. for the memorial and to lobby members of Congress to pass gun reform legislation. It was there that I met Matthew Soto, whose sister Vicky lost her life at the shooting when the gunman ended her life when she refused to say where her students were after she hid them in cabinets,” Frost said.

“Seeing Matthew’s uncontrolled sobbing and the deep pain he so clearly felt after losing his sister who did nothing but go to school that day, changed my life. I went home to my hotel room that night. I cried. And I dedicated the rest of my life to ending gun violence so that no one would have to experience what Matthew did — what the survivors, victims, parents, and Sandy Hook community did, ever again.”