Tag: gun safety
MAGA's All-American Gunners And The Political Violence Blame Game

MAGA's All-American Gunners And The Political Violence Blame Game

This week the MAGA Disinformation Industrial Complex is spewing blame on "the left" for the apparent second assassination attempt on Trump. On Sunday, a disturbed man who had racked up dozens of weapons violations but remained armed and free thanks to decades of MAGA-pandering, loose gun laws poked his machine gun through the fence around Trump’s Palm Beach golf course.

Agents nabbed him before he fired a shot, but the incident was another dot on the graph of rising American political violence this year, following the deadly Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt which left shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks and a rallygoer dead — and Trump with a bloodied ear.

Trump immediately went on Fox to accuse his political opponents — as he and his supporters did after Butler. The man with the gun in Palm Beach “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said the day after his security team apprehended Ryan Wesley Routh. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

Apparently, the idea is that Democrats should suspend their campaign against Trump/Vance in the wake of the latest — let’s call it a gun incident since Routh thankfully never got around to firing a shot from his AK-47.

J.D. Vance picked up the refrain, proclaiming at a speech in Atlanta that “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out.”

Trump superfan Elon Musk gave his stamp of approval to this horrendous idea (translation: why aren’t people shooting at Kamala Harris???). He posted a perplexed face emoji under an X post repeating that no one has tried to kill Harris or Walz. The Richest Man in the World (tm) had second thoughts - as he often does - and deleted that implicitly threatening post, but not before harvesting tens of thousands of “likes.”

All the gaslighting this week about Democratic rhetoric obscures the fact that Trump himself raised America to this new level of violence from the day in 2015 when he sent his retired NYPD goon Keith Schiller out on 5th Avenue to rough up people protesting his “Mexican rapists” campaign slogan.

Besides vulgarity and shamelessness, the hallmark of the nine and counting MAGA years in American politics is the rising number of violent threats directed at elected officials across the country. This “tidal wave of menacing behavior,” as CNN put it, includes the skyrocketing number of prosecuted threats during Trump’s term in office, peaking in 2021 — with more than 40 percent of cases occurring in the final weeks of Trump's term. Threats are now rising again.

Trump has always urged his rally-goers to beat protestors. He now promises to embark on a “bloody” deportation project while suggesting his supporters will engage in violence if he loses the election. His rhetoric is effective. Even before his last violent insurrection on January 6, in May 2020, NBC found 54 cases in which the charged perpetrators of threats and assaults referenced Trump’s incitement to violence. “Reviewing police reports and court records, ABC News found that in at least 12 cases perpetrators hailed Trump amid the immediate aftermath of physically assaulting innocent victims. In another 18 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.”

No one in the MAGAsphere seems to notice or care that their own resistance to reasonable gun control enabled misfit Routh - who has dozens of previous charges - to arm himself in the first place. Routh had been pulled over by police more than 100 times and was considered “a dangerous person,” but still legally stocked high-powered weapons and explosives. In a sane nation, a man convicted on a weapons of mass destruction charge - as Routh was after barricading himself inside his North Carolina roofing business with a machine gun after being pulled over at a traffic stop - would not walk free, let alone get to keep and expand his gun collection.

But Routh was sent home and remained armed.

The barricading incident was just one of the violent confrontations Routh racked up. He has convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, for possession of stolen property, for hit-and-run, misdemeanor convictions for resisting an officer and driving on a suspended license. Routh doesn’t seem to have spent much, if any time in jail. For all the convictions, he received a suspended sentence and parole or probation.

What was such a man doing free, locked, and loaded?

Committing a crime as a white man in Dixie is one answer. But there’s a broader political reason: In much of MAGA America, impunity for bullies and wackos includes the right to stockpile guns and ammo and carry concealed weapons.

For years, the Republican Party has been a shameless subsidiary and propaganda machine for the NRA and the gun industry. The creed is: Let no man’s guns be messed with. Gun worship is a plank of the Republican agenda, and that fact is rule number one in the GOP-controlled House. These are the politicians who invented the family Christmas card with ma, pa, and the kids all holding AR-15s in front of the tree.

Here’s a brief history of their moves, starting with the Sandy Hook school massacre, that hideous event that in hindsight, marked the end of any hope for a disarmed future.

In 2012, in the weeks after a severely troubled boy killed his mother, 20 children, and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, a majority of U.S. senators supported passing legislation requiring expanded background checks for gun purchases. But a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate killed that effort.

(That failure of political will was a moment of utter despair for any American still paying attention. If Republicans in Congress won’t do anything after the murder of a classroom of babies, they never will.)

Ten years and thousands of American gun deaths later, in 2022, a Democrat-led Congress eked out a bill that made incremental progress. It expanded the records used for background checks on gun purchasers under age 21, increased punishments for straw purchases, and closed the so-called boyfriend loophole, expanding the gun ban to people convicted of domestic violence against a dating partner as well as a spouse. But the final Senate-approved bill lacked any of the gun control provisions Democrats had included in the House-passed bills, including expanding background checks and banning assault weapons and bump stocks.

In the first week of the current Congress, in February 2023, Republicans sported cute little silver AR-15 pins on their lapels. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), a fierce opponent of federal regulations on firearms, who owns two gun shops, had handed them out. “They say the pins are symbols of their commitment to the Second Amendment and Americans’ right to bear arms,” reported a Time writer who canvassed the members.

Not that they likely cared, but Rep. Clyde, according to later reporting in the New York Times, didn’t tell his colleagues that his own gun business had fallen afoul of existing federal laws aimed at dealers of guns later used in crimes. One of his two gun stores, Clyde Armory in Athens, sold more than 25 guns later used in crimes, according to the Times.

The ATF had placed Rep. Clyde’s business into a federal monitoring program in 2020 and 2021.

Last year, after a weekend in which the nation racked up the highest death toll from mass shootings, Senate Republicans blocked a national assault weapons ban. Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso objected to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s request for unanimous consent to pass the assault weapons ban, despite the pleas of Democratic senators who took to the Senate floor to recite American gun violence statistics. Republicans also torpedoed another Democrat-led proposal for universal background checks.

“Americans have a constitutional right to own a firearm,” Barrasso said. “Every day, people across Wyoming responsibly use their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. Democrats are demanding that the American people give up their liberty.”

Barrasso added that Democrats want to ban many semi-automatic firearms “because of the way they look.” (They look pretty bad to Secret Service agents who spot them poking through a fence on a Florida golf course, but OK.)

MAGA tools like Barasso on Capitol Hill are wildly out of step with the rest of America. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of Americans favor requiring background checks for all firearm sales.

In pro-gun states, the insanity and hypocrisy defies belief. In Texas, for example, lawmakers loosen gun laws in response to massacres. The legislators passed permitless carry less than two years after 30 people died in mass shootings in just two incidents, in El Paso and Odessa. After 19 children died in Uvalde, neither Texas nor its Congressional delegation did anything besides transmitting thoughts and prayers. “It’s astounding to me,” state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio whose district includes Uvalde, told the Texas Tribune at the time. “We’re supposed to create things. We’re supposed to create legislation to keep people safe. By God, to keep children safe. And here we’ve done exactly the opposite.”

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible. This post is reprinted with permission from her American FreakshowSubstack. Please consider subscribing.

Parents Who Arm Troubled Kids Finally Face Justice

Parents Who Arm Troubled Kids Finally Face Justice

Her blank face in court spoke volumes. Jennifer Crumbley saw no problem handing her severely depressed 15-year-old a semiautomatic handgun as a Christmas present. Ethan soon after turned the gun on the student body of Oxford High, killing four.

What makes this case both chilling and sickening is that Ethan had telegraphed his rapid unravelling, and his mother ignored it. He told her there was a demon in the house. He sent her desperate text messages that she did not address: Jennifer was reportedly off tending to her horses and a secretive six-month affair.

The school called in both parents to discuss a violent drawing Ethan had made in math class. It showed a bleeding person and a gun and the words "blood everywhere" and "the thoughts won't stop" and "help me" on a math sheet.

The parents failed to tell the school he had a gun. And they refused to take him home. They had jobs, you know.

When the school told the parents that Ethan was found searching online for ammunition, Jennifer sent her boy a supportive text. It read: "LOL (laughing out loud), I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."

Jennifer failed to impress the jury with praise of her parenting skills and her sweet descriptions of family Thanksgiving dinners. She blamed Ethan's father for not properly storing the weapon, but that also didn't get her off the hook.

Jennifer was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison. Her husband will soon be tried.

What is going on? Americans have always owned guns for hunting, sport or self-defense. But today's politicized gun mania has turned deadly firearms into toys for children or fashion accessories.

There was that famous case of the 6-year-old who shot his elementary school teacher in Newport News, Virginia. His mother was sentenced to two years in prison for child neglect. How on earth did a first grader get access to a loaded gun? It was lying around the house.

The gun obsession played a part in the horrific 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 27 innocents dead. The killer's divorced mother, Nancy Lanza, would go to bars at night bragging to the guys about her guns. Despite son Adam's history of serious mental illness, she left the firearms strewn around their house. Today a jury probably would have locked her up and thrown away the key — had Adam not murdered her first.

Other lonely women have been known to seek company by making common cause with the male-dominated gun fixation. In Oregon, Laurel Harper participated in gun forums, alternating her topics between descriptions of her son's mental illness and her gun collection.

She probably expected pats on the head when she told the fellas, "I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs and AKs (semiautomatics) all have loaded mags." Wildly clueless, she criticized "lame states" that put limits on loaded firearms in the home.

Her son Christopher Harper-Mercer had been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric treatment. He brought six guns to Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and slaughtered 10 people. After the massacre, Laurel told detectives that Christopher was "mad at the world."

Are parents who keep unsecured loaded weapons in homes shared with disturbed or very young children themselves mentally off? The argument can be made. But if police removed arms from adults without criminal records, the gun lobby would go crazy.

Legal experts see the Crumbley case as the first to directly hold parents culpable for giving a child who turns guns on others access to weapons. But where did these parents come from?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

There Is No Such Thing As An Accidental Shooting

There Is No Such Thing As An Accidental Shooting

I’m trying to bring some sense into the discussion about guns. Please help out by becoming a paid subscriber.

What the hell is going on with the recent spate of so-called accidental shootings? The shootings are being called accidental because the victims did something everyone alive has done at least once, and probably more than once: they went to the wrong house or approached the wrong car by accident.

In Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old Black teenager, had been sent to pick up his siblings and went to the wrong address by mistake. When he rang the doorbell, 84 year old Andrew Lester answered the door and shot the teenager twice with a .32 caliber revolver – in the head and in the arm. Lester has been arrested and charged with two felonies that could put him behind bars for life. Lester told the police he was “scared to death” because of the boy’s size and age. Yarl is five feet eight inches tall, weighs 140 pounds, is 16 years old, and was unarmed. He has been discharged from the hospital and is undergoing a long recovery at home.

Twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot dead last Saturday outside Salem, New York, when the car she was riding in turned down the wrong driveway while trying to find the location of a party. Sixty-four year old Kevin Monahan fired two shots through the rear window of the car in which Gillis was riding in the front passenger seat. The driver, realizing they were at the wrong address, had turned the car around and was leaving the property following another car in the group and a man on a motorcycle. The vehicles were traveling together and mistook Monahan’s driveway for the one they were looking for because there was no cell service in the very rural area, and their GPS wasn’t working. Gillis was in the last car that turned around and was heading down the driveway.

On Tuesday in Austin, Texas, Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, shot two teenage cheerleaders in the parking lot of a H-E-B supermarket when one of them mistakenly got into his car thinking it was her own. Realizing her mistake, the cheerleader, Heather Roth, got out of the car and began apologizing when Rodriguez, seated in the passenger seat, got out of the car, pulled a 9 mm pistol and began shooting. He hit a cheerleader in the other car, Payton Washington, and grazed Roth. The two women drove from the scene and were two miles away when they realized Washington was seriously wounded by two bullets fired by the gunman.

Rodriguez has been arrested and was charged with deadly conduct with a firearm. He is being held on $500,000 bail. Roth was treated at the scene for her minor injury. Washington, who was born with only one lung, was airlifted to a hospital and is recovering from damage to her pancreas and diaphragm. Her spleen, pierced by one of the bullets, was removed. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Two of these shootings involve victims who mistakenly or accidentally went to the wrong address; in the third, the victim accidentally got into the wrong car in a large supermarket parking lot where people forget exactly where they parked their cars every day. Although in all three incidents mistakes were made by the victims, the responsible parties are the people who owned the firearms, because the active, intentional act was aiming the gun at the victims and pulling the trigger.

This is what I mean when I say there are no accidental shootings: Any discharge of a firearm is preceded by at least five intentional acts. First, the shooter had to buy the gun. Second, the shooter had to load the gun. Third, the shooter had to either be carrying the gun, as the shooter in the automobile was, or he had to have the gun nearby or on his person at his residence, as in the other two cases. Fourth, the shooter had to aim the gun at the victim. Fifth, the shooter had to discharge the gun by pulling the trigger.

The victims in these cases may have accidentally been somewhere they shouldn’t have been, but all three shooters did not discharge their firearms accidentally at all.

They don’t tell gun buyers this at gun stores, but owning a firearm comes with certain grave responsibilities. A gun must be stored safely. If it’s carried by a person, or accessed at someone’s home, it must be used safely. In all of these incidents, the shooters are readying a defense that they felt threatened or were “standing their ground” to defend themselves. It’s bullshit. The shooter in Kansas City was not in any danger from the unarmed 16 year old who rang his doorbell. The shooter in New York fired through the back window of a car as it was driving away and not presenting any threat at all. The shooter in Texas was faced by an unarmed teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform, a threat in exactly nobody’s book.

Probably the greatest problem with a firearm is that by its nature, it contains potential energy which depends on the relative positions of parts of the system to which it is attached or with which it is involved. A bow has potential energy only when its string is pulled back. A ball has potential energy only if it is lifted from the ground and becomes subject to gravity.

You could make a case that a firearm has potential energy only when it is cocked, but in the case of many firearms, cocking the weapon is not necessary or is automatic. A double-action revolver is cocked when the trigger is pulled. A semiautomatic pistol with a round in the chamber fires when the trigger is pulled and cocks itself for the next shot. But the real potential energy is the bullet itself, which stores its energy in the form of gunpowder in the shell casing of every bullet in its magazine or clip.

So, even a gun just sitting on a shelf, or in the case of the Texas shooting, on the center console of the car, contains potential energy and the capacity to kill.

That’s why the military treats firearms as if they are loaded and ready to fire at all times, even if they are stored unloaded under lock and key in an arms room. As a second lieutenant, I was weapons officer in an Infantry company at Fort Carson, Colorado. The Army required me to inspect the arms room every day to ensure that every weapon assigned to that company, and all of the ammunition, was secure. I had to sign what amounted to an affidavit attesting to that fact every day. The punishment for lying on that affidavit was a year in jail. The punishment for unintentional manslaughter was only six months. That’s how seriously the Army takes its firearms.

Individual soldiers who are issued a firearm to be used on a firing range, during a training exercise, or in combat, are responsible for everything that happens to that weapon when it is in their possession. For soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, that meant having their weapons with them at all times, including sleeping with an M-16 or M-4 or Beretta 9 mm by their sides. As a cadet, I was excited the first day I was issued my first rifle, which in those days was an M-14. By the end of that day, that M-14 was the biggest pain in the ass I had ever had.

I was responsible for everything about that rifle: keeping it clean, storing it safely, using it safely, ensuring it wasn’t lost or stolen. In the Army, losing your weapon is a serious offense, punishable by special court martial and reduction in rank and pay, or in the case of officers, possible expulsion from the service. Mis-firing your weapon is just as serious, with similar punishments. Accidentally firing your weapon and hitting someone could get you sent to Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks.

Getting back to the three recent incidents where innocent victims were shot by gun-owners, the question is, what is the connective tissue between them?

One is the gun itself. Nobody would have been shot if the two homeowners and the guy who owned the car did not have guns either on their persons or nearby.

Two is the mistake made by the innocent victim, either going to the wrong address or opening the door of the wrong car.

Three was the improper conclusion by the gun owner that they were being confronted by a threat when no threat was present.

Four was the gun owner aiming and discharging his weapon.

There is one overarching thing that connects all three incidents: fear on the part of the gun owners. All three of them were afraid enough that they went out and bought their guns and ammunition and either carried their weapons or had them available for use nearby. It is possible to be rationally fearful: if someone assaults you with a deadly weapon, that is sufficient cause to be afraid. But it’s also possible to be irrationally fearful. Prejudice can cause irrational fear, so can what we might call politically-driven paranoia. If you watch Fox News and believe the lie that the crime rate is going through the roof when it actually isn’t, you can make yourself so irrationally afraid, you’ll think a random knock on a door or a car in your driveway you don’t recognize is a threat.

Overcoming fear is one of the things the Army is very good at teaching. They teach it so that soldiers don’t fire their weapons at “friendlies” when they mistake them for the enemy. Civilians don’t get training in overcoming fear at the gun stores where they buy their military-grade firearms such as AR-15 semiautomatic rifles or semiautomatic pistols made by Beretta, Sig Sauer, and other manufacturers. Come to think of it, there is no training required at all for gun buyers.

But here’s the thing: You don’t have to overcome fear if you don’t own a firearm. All you have to do is lock your doors and windows and call 911. Until the day comes when there are more people willing to do just that, rather than buying one of the 400 million guns already in private hands in this country, we’re going to continue to have shootings of innocent victims by gun-owners who don’t know what the hell they’re doing when they pick up a firearm. Such a thing wouldn’t happen if a gun-owner hadn’t gone out and bought a deadly weapon on purpose and had it lying around to be picked up by a child or pointed at a stranger.

Postscript

Klint Ludwig, the grandson of Andrew Lester, the man who shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in Kansas City last week, told CNN today that he wasn’t surprised that his grandfather had shot the teenager. “The warning signs were there. I wasn’t shocked when I heard the news. I believe he held – holds – racist tendencies and beliefs. His actions are his responsibility, and falling into the fear and paranoia stoked by the 24-hour news cycle and wild conspiracies did not help his mental state,” Ludwig said.

Yarl is an honor student at his high school in Kansas City and had approached Lester’s home by mistake, seeking to pick up his brothers from a play date.

Yesterday, Robert Louis Singletary, 24, shot a 6-year-old girl and her parents when a basketball neighborhood children were playing with in the street rolled into his yard. The father was shot in the back by Singletary and is in serious condition. The child was hit in the cheek by bullet fragments. The mother was grazed by a bullet. The mother’s and daughter’s wounds have been stitched up and they have been released from the hospital.

"He looked at my husband and my daughter and told them, 'I'm going to kill you,'" the mother told CNN. Singletary was out on bond for an assault on his girlfriend in December. After the shooting, he fled to Florida. He turned himself into a police department near Tampa, where he was arrested and is awaiting extradition back to North Carolina.

As ABC News reported last evening, “The North Carolina shooting follows a string of similar incidents where seemingly ordinary mistakes have led to serious consequences involving firearms.”

“Involving firearms?” If no guns had been present at the time of the incidents, nobody would have been shot, no blood would have been shed, and most probably, nobody would have been arrested.


Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Abbott Orders Weekly School Door Checks, Not Gun Safety Reforms

Abbott Orders Weekly School Door Checks, Not Gun Safety Reforms

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday announced his proposals for preventing mass shootings in schools — none of which is related to firearms.

While polling shows voters are clamoring for such changes to gun laws as strengthening background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of people judged to be a danger to themselves or others, and limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, Abbott instead ordered weekly door checks at schools across Texas.

In a letter to Mike Morath, the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, Abbott laid out his ideas in the wake of the May 24 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde in the southern part of the state, in which 19 fourth graders and two teachers were gunned down by an 18-year-old who was able to legally purchase two AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles in the week between his birthday and the day he brought one to the school.

A statement released by Abbott's office sets forth the governor's expectations:

Governor Abbott specifically requested TEA to:

  • instruct school districts to identify actions they can take prior to the start of the new school year that will make their campuses more secure
  • instruct all school districts to conduct weekly inspections of exterior doors to verify they are secure during school hours
  • develop strategies to encourage school districts to increase the presence of trained law enforcement officers and school marshals on campuses

In Texas and elsewhere, Republican lawmakers have focused on so-called "door control" in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, blaming the fact that the gunman was able to get into the school rather than the fact that he was able to legally purchase a weapon that can cause mass carnage in a matter of seconds.

Those same Republicans have eschewed any attempt to pass gun reform laws that would strengthen background checks, raise the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles, or temporarily prevent people who are deemed a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms.

"The point of 'door control' is the same as 'arm teachers' or 'mental health' — they don't really believe these things will solve the problem, the point is to distract us," Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) tweeted. "It's Republican Politicianese for 'hey look over there!' Stay focused: the problem is the guns."

Polling shows that voters overwhelmingly support gun law reform.

A Pew Research survey from 2021 found more than half of American adults, or 53 percent, support stricter gun laws. Specific reforms garner even more support, with 87 percent supporting a law that would prevent people with mental illnesses from buying guns; 81 percent supporting closing gun background check loopholes; 64 percent supporting bans on high-capacity ammunition magazines; and 63 percent supporting a ban on assault-style weapons.

President Joe Biden called for gun safety measures in a speech Thursday night, which he prefaced by saying:

According to new data just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents. More than cancer.

Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined. Think about that: more kids than on-duty cops killed by guns, more kids than soldiers killed by guns.

For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say "enough"? Enough.

Meanwhile, House Democrats plan to hold votes on gun reform legislation upon their return from recess next week.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced H.R. 7910, the Protecting Our Kids Act, out of committee Thursday night. The bill would raise the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic guns from 18 to 21; require gun owners to safely store firearms in their homes; ban high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; and address gun trafficking by requiring serial numbers on guns.

The legislation is supported by Giffords, the gun violence prevention organization launched by former Rep. Gabby Giffords.

"THIS is what action looks like," Giffords tweeted after the committee advanced the bill.

During a mark-up hearing on H.R. 7910, Republicans voiced their opposition.

Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, appearing via Zoom from his home, showed off the guns he owns and complained that banning high-capacity magazines would inconvenience him by forcing him to buy different ammunition. Gun experts said Steube could easily buy different ammunition that would fit his weapons.

Rep. Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said, "In rural Colorado, an AR-15 is a gun of choice for killing raccoons before they get to our chickens."

Responded California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "Oh—Why didn't y'all just say so? We have to protect the chickens from the raccoons. Cool cool. So that's why our kids have to die in their classrooms. So we can protect the chickens. Makes total sense now."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

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