Republicans Are Bending Over Backward To Blame Anything But Guns For Shootings — Here Are 19 Ridiculous Things They've Blamed Instead
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In the wake of continued mass shootings, gun laws have become an increasingly contentious issue for many Americans.
To many, the solution to mass shootings seems easy — ban assault rifles. Raise the age to purchase a gun. Require background checks for anyone looking to buy a gun.
However, others feel that "blaming guns" is the wrong answer.* Instead, they're bending over backward to blame mass shootings on any number of other things. Here are just a few of the moronic comments they've made!
*I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that many of them receive money from the NRA.
1.ABORTION RIGHTS: When Missouri representative Billy Long was asked if there was any desire to look at doing things differently when it came to guns, he replied, "No one has been able to come up with any kind of suggestion that would have helped in any of these situations" and that "unfortunately, they're trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies."
Literally no one is saying guns get up and walk themselves to schools and fire on their own. That doesn't change the fact that adjusting gun laws would decrease mass shootings as it has in many other countries.
He then continued, "When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now, we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society, and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mother's wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks."
I really wonder what the correlation is between people who have gotten abortions and mass shooters. Seeing as most mass shooters typically do not have a uterus...I'm gonna say it's pretty low. And does anyone remember a mass shooter who was super vocally pro-abortion?
Long does not appear to have apologized for or clarified these comments, and last month retweeted an article with a similar sentiment.
Listen to his words here:
Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) blames gun violence on abortion: "Something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion, when we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mothers' wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks."
2.WEED: Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently blamed mass shootings on the legalization of weed. “They are high on government-endorsed weed," Carlson said of mass shooters. "‘Smoke some more, it’s good for you...’” he seemed to imply the government says.
3.WOMEN IN GENERAL: Carlson also said young men commit mass shootings because "the authorities in their lives ― mostly women ― never stops lecturing them about their so-called privilege.”
Tucker Carlson is blaming mass shootings on women "lecturing" men
4.SPECIFICALLY, WORKING WOMEN: Former New Hampshire Sen. Jim Rubens blamed mass shootings on the rise in working women in a 2009 blog post, and doubled down on the claim during his 2014 run for Senate.
"The collaborative, flexible, amorphously hierarchical American economy is shutting out ordinary men who were once the nation's breadwinners in living-wage labor and manufacturing jobs," he wrote in his blog. In defending these comments in 2013 to BuzzFeed News, he said that the loss of these jobs (linked to the rise of women in the workforce) "has increased stress in males" to the point where some "engage in acts of extreme violence." However, Rubens said he supported women in the workforce and that the solution to the issue he raised would be to increase manufacturing jobs, not decrease the number of working women. "If you read the ... posting, I don't see anything that causes anyone to conclude I'm seeking to in any way make a claim that it's not great that women have come up in the economy," he told BuzzFeed News. After the article was published, he took down the blog post.
5.MEDICATION: Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed mass shootings on medication, and said a "return to God" would solve the issue.
She also tweeted the next day that most school/mass shooters have "experienced severe trauma in childhood," are "susceptible to depression, anxiety, thought disorders," saying this leads them to medication. "Taking meds like SSRIs have dangerous side effects that can no longer be ignored. Among many other side effects they can cause suicidal and homicidal thoughts," she continued. "Most school/mass shooters have taken or recently stopped taking medications for mental illness."
While it is often true that childhood trauma is at play for mass shooters (this is not, however, to say that experiencing trauma in childhood means someone is going to act violently), and that SSRIs can have side effects like suicidal thoughts, especially in young people, the overgeneralizations Greene made and the implication that SSRIs are responsible for school shootings are largely baseless and confuse correlation with causation.
TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: Taylor Greene also referenced "being raised in an American Godless culture that hates masculinity, demeans men, puts girls or trans above boys or turns boys into girls, [and] teaches fleshly desires over responsibility/work" as contributing to a "deadly recipe for mass murder."
It does not appear Taylor Greene ever walked back or apologized for these statements.
6.DRAG QUEENS and GAY MARRIAGE: Former Ohio lawmaker Candice Keller blamed shootings on a number of things, including (but not limited to): drag queens, gay marriage, weed, open borders, and professional athletes who take a knee during the national anthem. Oh, and "snowflakes."
Ohio Rep. Candice Keller blamed gay marriage, marijuana, open borders, "drag queen advocates," and more for the recent mass shootings. https://t.co/4HOx85Xj7V
7.THE COVID-19 VACCINE: Patrick J. Brosnan, a retired NYPD detective and security analyst for many national news networks, said on Fox News that vaccinations would cause mass shootings.
"They were just scared to come out," Brosnan said, suggesting shooters were afraid of getting COVID-19 and once they were vaccinated, that fear would diminish and they'd be back.
Listen to the clip here:
This seems like a weird takeaway from the San Jose mass shooting.Retired NYPD detective Pat Brosnan on Fox News: "Once covid starts to lift, these cowardly shooters will come out exactly in tandem with the number of vaccinations. You can be sure they probably got vaccinated."
8.SMARTPHONES: Texas Rep. Pat Fallon pointed out last month that guns have "always" been readily available, but that mass shootings are mostly a modern phenomenon. “So what’s changed in the last 50 years?" he asked.
“There’s been a noticeable breakdown of the family, there’s been an erosion of faith, and there’s been a seismic drop in social interaction in large measure due to the overuse of these dang smartphones and the proliferation of social media, which is probably better described as anti-social media," Fallon said.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) blamed mass shootings on "the overuse of these dang smartphones."
9.MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN ON SOCIAL MEDIA(??): Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker suggested in May that we should put more money toward the “mental health field,” suggesting a department be created to "look at young men that's looking at women that's looking on social media."
Herschel Walker's solution to school shootings involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media."
10."GODLESSNESS": After the El Paso and Dayton shootings, former Arkansas governor (and 2016 presidential hopeful) Mike Huckabee said the common denominator of shootings were not guns, but "hate inside the heart," a "loss of morality," and "disconnecting from a God who values all people."
![In the past, he's also blamed school shootings on the lack of Christian curriculum in schools. “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News in 2012. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we’re not just going to have [to] be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.”](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/KHajDI41dPUFZOOnP4gPSA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTYzOQ--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/cb3cfa54b5270ede42f258eb43c116c6)
In the past, he's also blamed school shootings on the lack of Christian curriculum in schools. “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News in 2012. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we’re not just going to have [to] be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.”
11.DECLINING CHURCH ATTENDANCE: Just days after the Uvalde shooting, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gave a speech at the NRA convention and similarly blamed shootings on a lack of religion, among other things. "Tragedies like the events of this week are a mirror forcing us to ask hard questions, demanding that we see where our culture is failing. Looking at broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media bullying, violent online content, desensitizing the act of murder in video games, chronic isolation, prescription drug and opioid abuse, and their collective effects on the psyche of young Americans," Cruz said.
12.VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES: Like Cruz, former president Trump also blamed shootings on video games. “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” he said in the wake of two mass shootings in one weekend in 2019. “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace."
Many studies done on the matter over the last few decades have turned up no solid evidence that violent video games cause shootings, though the theory continues to be touted by Republicans today.
13.CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson blamed shootings on "wokeness" and critical race theory. “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness,” Johnson said in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. “We’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling, you know, some children they’re not equal to others and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”
Critical race theory teaches how America's institutions, policies, and laws have been shaped by racism. Anchor Neil Cavuto replied to Johnson's comments on air, saying shootings were happening before CRT and "wokeness," but Johnson said that those things had been "going on under the radar for quite some time."
14.GUN REGULATIONS: Former Pennsylvania Sen. and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum blamed the El Paso shooting on the fact that unarmed people couldn't defend themselves, calling the Walmart shoppers "soft targets" that tempted a shooter.
Texas is an open carry state where the shoppers could've been armed, without the El Paso shooter being able to tell in order to target/not target them, so...this argument's pretty stupid.
15.FATHERLESSNESS: Utah Sen. Mike Lee suggested that not having a father was to blame for shootings. "Why is our culture suddenly producing so many young men who want to murder innocent people?" Lee asked, saying, "it raises questions like, could fatherlessness, the breakdown of families, isolation from civil society, or the glorification of violence be contributing factors?"
There is no solid evidence that fatherlessness is to blame for gun violence.
16.LIBERAL TEACHERS: Heather Ann Sprague, a Republican candidate for the Maine House of Representatives, blamed the Uvalde shooting on "liberal teachers," seemingly in reference to a false claim that the Uvalde shooter was transgender.
“All I have to say is this is the result of what happens when kids are pushed past their limits. It's obvious he was brainwashed in school by liberal teachers to think he shouldn’t be a male. If this crap doesn’t stop, we will have more shootings because there are a lot more confused, fed up and now mentally ill kids out there thanks to the #publicschoolsystem THIS is why I have been TRYING to get the truth out about what the schools are doing to our youth because it’s DANGEROUS,” Sprague posted on Facebook.
She later posted an apology, writing, "I let my concern and some false information get the best of me."
17.SANCTUARY CITIES: Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe blamed shootings (like the Las Vegas shooting) on a culture of lawlessness created by the existence of sanctuary cities — where local law enforcements limit how much they'll enforce immigration law in their city.
![<div><p>"I’m saying we’re inundated with permissive laws — that has a lot more to do with it than gun [ownership] laws," Inhofe said.</p></div><span> Stefani Reynolds / Getty Images</span>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/7h0c62TjQj8gQ2hgLW5JWg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/db2ced535de478df1c6114ddcd15940d)
"I’m saying we’re inundated with permissive laws — that has a lot more to do with it than gun [ownership] laws," Inhofe said.
18.BLACK PEOPLE: Arizona Senate candidate Blake Marsters blamed gun violence and shootings in the US in general on Black people. "It's gangs. It's people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly. And the Democrats don't want to do anything about that."
He also said Democrats "don't like the Second Amendment" because "it frankly blocks a lot of their plans for us." Marsters released a statement standing by his comments after backlash over them. "Journalists only cover shootings where the shooters and victims fit a certain profile," Masters wrote. "But most victims of gun murder in America are Black men. And most perpetrators of gun murder in America are Black men. These are simple facts, go look up the FBI crime statistics and CDC cause of death data while you still can." He also said, "There's an epidemic of violence that’s killing young Black men in America," and he "actually want[s] to solve it."
19.And finally, ZOMBIES: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin blamed shootings on violent television — specifically with zombies. “What’s the most popular topic that seems to be in every cable television network? Television shows are all about, what? Zombies! I don’t get it … now it's all about zombies. Which is what we are. We celebrate death."
“When a culture is surrounded by, inundated by, rewards things that celebrate death, whether it is zombies in television shows, the number of abortions…there’s a thousand justifications for why we do this," Bevin said.
Bevin later made more general remarks after his zombie comments made the rounds on social media. “We have a cultural problem. We celebrate death in America. And we do not celebrate life. At every turn, we denigrate human life. We disregard the sanctity of human life from beginning to end and all these things have an effect, and we are reaping what we have sown for decades."
