OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert went off on Democrats in an emotional response after, he believed, they were insinuating the Republicans sided with murderers.
“I don’t think that it’s very effective for the children to have people on the other side of the aisle come in and accuse Republicans of being complicit in murder and that we put our right to kill over others’ right to live,” he said during a Judiciary House Committee hearing on Thursday via video conference.
“To infer by rhetorical supposed questions: ‘Who are you here for? We must be here for the gunmen,’ is an outrage,” he said. “How dare you! You think we don’t have hearts?”
“It’s just that when we look at the things that you’re doing, and you’re trying to do to America, we’ve seen the carnage,” he argued.
“We care about people. We care about their lives, and lives have been so trivialized,” he said. “We care deeply. How dare you, how dare you, you arrogant people! Attributing murder to those of us that want to do things to stop it. Because we’ve seen what your ideas do, they create more murder.”
“Democrats control the major cities that have the worst murder rates — your ideas have been shown to get people killed,” he said.
“You here for the murderers, the murderers in Chicago, in Philadelphia in these other major cities, because you’re wanting to do nationally, what is being done by Democrats in those big cities,” he said.
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His comments came after some Democrat Congress members, including Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Val Demings criticized Republicans for opposing more gun legislation.
Swalwell asked his Republican colleagues, “Are you here for our kids, or are you here for the killers?”
“Because if you were here for the kids, you would do all you could to protect the next school shooting that’s about to happen, and we know it’s gonna happen in America,” the representative said.
“You would vote to raise the age on purchasing an assault rifle, you would vote to ban high-capacity magazines, you would vote to require safe storage and you would vote to address ghost guns, which are ravaging communities across America,” he said. “But if you’re here for the killers, you would do everything to make it easier for the next school shooting to happen.”
Hours later President Joe Biden gave a speech calling for stricter gun control measures.
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” he said as he went after Republicans.
“But, as we know, in order to do any – get anything done in the Senate, we need a minimum of 10 Republican senators,” the president said.
“I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way. But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don’t want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable.
“We can’t fail the American people again,” he said.
He went on to use the recent mass shootings to call for people to vote for representatives who support more gun control in, what many believe, was a desperate attempt to save the Democrats’ chances in the midterms.
“I’ve been in this fight for a long time. I know how hard it is, but I’ll never give up. And if Congress fails, I believe this time a majority of the American people won’t give up either. I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote,” he said.