TOPEKA (KSNT) – A Kansas congressional candidate for the second district is explaining why he is continuing to move forward with giving away an AR-15 rifle.

Tyler Tannahill said he started the giveaway to promote himself ahead of this weekend’s Republican Convention in Wichita.

“About a month ago we planned it out and earlier this week on Tuesday we did the launch,” Tannahill said. “I do believe in the second amendment and I stand for it in the hard times and the bad times, this is clearly a difficult time for a lot of people.”

According to law enforcement, an AR-15 Rifle was used in a deadly school shooting this week in Florida.

Tannahill admits the tragedy in Florida has led to more attention on his campaign and raffle.

“Obviously we don’t want the name recognition based off Florida, we’d want everyone of those individuals back instead of the name recognition,” he said.

Tannahill has faced a lot of criticism online. One post from Wednesday has more than 1,000 comments, calling him “tone-deaf” and the giveaway “poor judgement.”

However, the Marine veteran stands by the giveaway.

“There was that discussion on if we keep it up or take it down and as a campaign, we decided to keep it up to move forward with the discussion,” he said. “There has been a lot of backlash on it, but we’ve also gotten a lot of support.”

The Republican candidate said he hopes the giveaway starts a discussion.

Tannahill said the winner will still have to be able to legally own a gun, before they’ll be awarded it.

The winner should be announced in the next four months.