Tensions flared in the House on Wednesday in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville that killed three 9-year-old children and three adults, with Democrats expressing urgency about protecting children from slaughter and Republicans answering with their usual “nothing can happen” shrug.
After Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former high school principal, told reporters, “They have control of the House. The American people need to know that they don’t have the courage to do anything to save the lives of children,” he was approached by Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the most extreme right House Republicans. As the two argued about the issue, with Massie claiming “there’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry,” Bowman noted, “More guns lead to more deaths,” calling on Massie to “Look at the data.” (There is a direct correlation between weaker gun laws and increased gun deaths.)
At one point, Massie had the nerve to tell Bowman to “calm down,” to which Bowman replied, “Calm down? Children are dying!”
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Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a graduate of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, also challenged Republicans on stronger gun laws, drawing a response from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“Moskowitz demanded to know why Republicans fixated on crime in the nation’s capital were not instead holding a hearing on ‘murder in schools,’” CNN reports, “and asked why GOP lawmakers were so keen to ban books touching on gender issues when ‘dead kids can’t read.’”
Greene stepped in with a ludicrous distraction of a proposal: “If you want to have a good talk about schools and protecting children, we need to talk about protecting our children the same way we protect our president,” she said. It’s a distraction because of course no one would seriously believe that millions of children could or should receive the level of protection of one president, but it creates the impression that Republicans want to prevent school shootings.
Like Massie, Greene argued that more guns in schools would be better, blaming the Gun Free School Zones Act for the fact that “There was no good guy with a gun to protect us kids at school” during an incident when she was in 11th grade. “You want to know why the shooter is dead in Nashville?” she asked, going on to claim that it was because of “the good guy with a gun.” But obviously the Gun Free School Zones Act does not apply to law enforcement.
Republicans have a lot of talking points to distract from the need to do something about school shootings, because they’ve had a lot of practice responding to school shootings. They distract, they lie, they attack trans people, they call for more guns, they claim that good guys with guns “worked” in Nashville despite the six people murdered there. But it all boils down to “We’re not gonna fix it,” as Rep. Tim Burchett said, or, “When we start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,” as Sen. Mike Rounds said.
“I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns,” President Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday. That’s why “The Congress has to act.” But Republicans refuse. They prefer for children to die.
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