Add Abortion to the List of Things Republicans Are Blaming for Uvalde

William Vaillancourt
·2 min read
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Connecting America: Oversight of the FCC - Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
Connecting America: Oversight of the FCC - Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
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Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) on Wednesday blamed mass shootings on the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion.

“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year,” he said on Columbia, Missouri’s 93.9 The Eagle. “Now, we have two, three, four a week. So, something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion — when we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks.”

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Host Branden Rathert had been talking to Long about last week’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, specifically what Congress is going to do about the rash of mass shootings and whether Republicans would be willing to do things differently this time around when it comes to guns. Long basically threw up his hands.

“If there was something that would work that would prevent some of these things, any reasonable person is going to look at anything like that. But to this day and time, no one has been able to come up with any kind of a suggestion that would have helped in any of these situations,” he said, echoing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Since May 2019, there has been legislation under consideration in the House raising the age for purchasing assault rifles from 18 to 21.

Long, who is running for Senate to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, said some senators recently held a Zoom meeting, but that it “went south in a hurry.”

“Unfortunately, they’re trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies, and there’s so many things that can be done,” he said.

Gun control is not one of these things, according to Long, who joined the list of those who have proposed “hardening” schools. Classrooms, he said, should be built with more than one exit, and funds that have been designated for Ukraine should instead be used for this.

Hours after Long’s radio appearance, a gunman killed four people in a medical building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Rathert might want to ask Long how this could have taken place in a state that recently banned nearly all abortions.

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