As more details emerge about the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, where three children and three staff members were killed after a 28-year-old woman opened fire, it is getting more and more obvious that the U.S. is in dire need of stricter gun laws. Politicians who have been advertising owning a gun as a sacred privilege are finding themselves on the receiving end of justified criticism as they try to skirt around the fact that what they continue to support has taken innocent lives yet again. But of course, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) not only started her day by defending people’s ability to purchase guns, but also used the shooting to promote the need for more firearms, especially in schools.
Fresh from dabbling in racism and anti-LGBTQ+ rants, Greene began her usual stream of tweets by complaining about ATF — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. law enforcement agency regulating the usage of firearms, among other things — inspecting a gun store in Smyrna, GA.
Her tweet coincided with the outpouring of reports about the shooting at the school, and just as many commenters started sounding off about her still fighting in favor of gun possession, she posted yet another tweet, this one lamenting the lives lost in the incident. But she didn’t stop there. According to MTG, it is not the lax gun laws that caused the “horrific needless tragedy,” but the absence of “good guys with guns” on school premises.
“Children and school staff should always be protected the same way politicians, money, precious stones, and gold are protected, but even more so, by good guys with guns. Thank God for good guys with guns and thank God a good guy with a gun killed the evil mentally deranged shooter today. Joe Biden’s gun free school zones have endangered children at schools leaving them as innocent targets of sick horrible disturbed people ever since he worked as a Senator to pass this foolish law.
What a fool. What a failure.”
Greene’s tweets have always erred on the side of being majorly problematic, but those in the comments didn’t waste a single second in pointing out that Greene’s praise of the very policies that enable opening fire on children, followed by her demand for even more guns in circulation is to insult the lives lost, and demonstrate that MTG will exploit a tragedy to further her cause.
But Greene has decided to double down on her glaringly self-serving take.
According to her, the government should be arming the “good guys” with guns instead of curbing the danger at the root by banning assault weapons. Needless to say, it is getting harder to decide whether to question Greene’s logic, or dissect the skyrocketing levels of her self-absorption.