Although the Right may get frustrated with new and young Democratic lawmakers who supported things like universal healthcare and responses to poverty and violence, the Left is far more frustrated with new and attention-seeking Republican lawmakers who support things like more and more dangerous weapons on the street. Clearly, the two parties are not the same, and Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made that fact all too obvious over the weekend following another round of mass shootings. The White House had an excoriating response to her nonsense.
The AR-15 is my favorite gun for hunting & home defense.
Banning “assault weapons” will not stop a transgender from shooting up his own LGBTQ community or any other murderer already breaking laws to kill people.
More gun control laws just create more defenseless victims.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/BPlXxtFEVZ
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 26, 2022
I will always protect American’s GREAT Second Amendment!
No Assault Weapons Ban!!
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 26, 2022
Of course, “a transgender” did not go “shooting up his own LGBTQ community.” A crazed bigot steeped in the kind of rhetoric pushed by Greene and her comrades in Congress against transgender Americans purchased an AR-15 and used it to slaughter the same people Greene has insisted are “pedos.”
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement to reporters that:
‘These sentiments, from a politician who has called for violence against those with whom she disagrees, are not only inherently discredited – but they prove President Biden’s point. An assault weapons ban is one of the most effective actions we can take to support law enforcement in the fight against gun crime. Police chiefs have attested to that and the American people support doing so. Choosing the gun industry lobby over keeping our streets safe and protecting our children’s lives is flatly unacceptable, which is why President continues to advocate for an assault
weapons ban.’
NEW: The Biden admin is singling out @RepMTG for her “inherently discredited” opposition to @POTUS’ proposed assault weapons ban@AndrewJBates46 tells me her statements over the weekend only serve to “prove President Biden’s point…” pic.twitter.com/ftduwhMysu
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) November 28, 2022
There are also a few things – far more than a few – that President Biden, who served in Congress from 1973 to 2008, knows that Marjorie Taylor Greene does not appear to or at least won’t admit. Assault weapons were banned by American lawmakers under the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, which resulted in a steep decline in mass shooting deaths. Once that ban expired in 2004, deaths by mass shootings immediately saw a steep increase. In fact, experts estimate that the risk of dying at the hands of a mass shooter were more than seventy percent higher without the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
Biden, who supports reinstating the ban, knows this because he was there at the time. Greene either doesn’t know this or she just won’t admit it lest she risk losing the support of the gun weapons lobbyists.
President Biden today: “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It has no social redeeming value. Zero. None…I'm going to try to get rid of assault weapons"
Video from @cspan pic.twitter.com/6kpHWyFtRp
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 24, 2022
There are a few other facts that Greene, who famously chased down a teenaged survivor of a school shooting while telling him she was carrying a firearm, doesn’t want to admit. For instance, the United States accounts for more than 73 percent of all mass shooting deaths, far higher than any other country and more than all other developed countries combined. AR-15s do not make anyone safer. In fact, they increase the likelihood of death by mass shooting significantly.
