On Monday, a 25-year-old man started firing his legally-purchased AR-15 rifle at the bank where he worked, killing five and injuring eight. The shooting happened in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and the gunman was identified as Connor Sturgeon. The weapon he used is a favorite of Republicans, and one they regularly brandish and wholeheartedly oppose regulating, despite the gun being used in multiple mass shootings. Members of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have posed with the weapon, and it’s not a great look.
A Twitter account called Call To Activism highlighted just how often the gun is used in mass casualty events.
For some reason, lawmakers like to pose with these guns. It’s pretty easy advertising for the gun industry, considering they can’t really advertise on TV. As the account points out, this is the same gun that’s worn as a pin by Republicans, and the same gun that scared 30 armed officers in Uvalde.
For the record, it’s also the same gun that was used in: The Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 (17 dead); the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 (58 dead); The Sutherland Springs church shooting in 2017 (26 dead); the Pulse Nightclub shooting (49 dead); the San Bernardino shooting in 2015 (14 dead); and the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 (27 dead).
Why are they so proud to pose with this killing machine that’s robbed so many families of loved ones? This is a sickness. Why do we, as a country, need to have this firearm? No one wants to take away all guns, they just want to get the AR-15 out of circulation so people can’t buy them and go kill kids in schools.
Greene and Boebert love posing, but they’re not so big on actually offering solutions. Except one they will apparently die to protect: access to an AR-15. Why?
It’s pretty clear that bans on assault rifles work. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton signed a ban on assault weapons, which banned the AR-15 and a number of other firearms. Shootings went down in comparison to the decade before and the one after, per NPR.
The data is all there, but the gun industry, politicians, and gun proponents all say that the gun should remain legal, and that it’s only used for hunting, competitions, and target practice — despite being deployed by bad guys to hunt down kids in schools, and worshippers in churches, and shoppers in supermarkets, and people just trying to watch a movie in a movie theater.
Will this ever change? Or will Americans just have to live with that daily buried fear of having to check every exit when they enter a building? Of having to bury a loved one? Civilians shouldn’t have to keep our heads on a swivel. Stop voting for these people.