Setting out to shame Britain over its knife crime statistics, Donald Trump sycophant Marjorie Taylor Greene lashed out at a Channel 4 journalist.
Challenged over her continued support for gun freedom despite recent massacres, the far-right Republican told Siobhan Kennedy to “go back to your own country”.
It’s “our job to defend the Second Amendment”, shrieked Taylor Greene.
The Channel 4 reporter replied: “We don’t have guns in the UK, that is true, but we don’t have mass shootings either. And our children aren’t scared to go to school.”
The controversial politician shot back: “You have mass stabbings, lady. You have all kinds of murder.”
Her idol Donald Trump has also tried to suggest that the UK has an epidemic of knife crime comparable to the US’s shootings problem.
In 2018, while serving as US President, Trump said: “In London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital right in the middle is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds.”
Gun violence in the US of course dwarfs the UK’s.
But even on knife crime alone, the US suffers far more.
Latest figures show 4.96 homicides “due to knives or cutting instruments” in America for every million of the population in 2016. In Britain the figure was 3.26.
One tragic incident illustrated the situation just 48 hours after Taylor Greene’s false portrayal of it.
Three children died of stab wounds, and another two were injured, all in one house on her patch.
A mother was accused of going on the rampage in Yorkville – in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which Taylor Greene represents – attacking five of her seven children.
Several tried to escape by jumping out of a first-floor window.
Darlene Brister, 40, is to appear in court over the deaths on Monday.
Just weeks before, police had dealt with another bloodbath close to the congresswoman’s home in Rome, Georgia, when a man tried to stab another to death at the Fairbridge Inn and Suite hotel.
Elsewhere, a 20-year-old woman, from Rome, was arrested in May after reports said she aided in stabbing another person.
Last month a 26-year-old, also of Rome, was arrested after reports that she tried to cut and stab a man at a location on Shorter Avenue.
The knife crimes in the city – with just 37,000 people – show how desperate Mad Marjorie was to lie when hitting back at the UK. Brister’s neighbour Edward Springer, described the feeling in the district.
“It is harrowing to think what happens here,” he said.
“Because guns are so easy to get hold of, knifings in the States shouldn’t be as common.
“As people say, you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, but here people do, and that’s on Taylor Greene to sort. It’s okay her saying she wants everyone armed with a gun, but they are also armed with knives.”
Taylor Greene assumed office in America’s powerful House of Representatives on January 3 last year.
Just three days later she was begging then-President Trump for a pardon for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
That and her stance on guns seems to have left her unpopular.
On a stroll down the town’s historic Broad Street, those we met said they were embarrassed by Taylor Greene’s suggestions the UK, thanks to our tight gun laws, now has a knife problem instead of a gun problem.
Retired haulier Ted Mahon, 73, whose first wife was from Solihull, West Mids, said: “The woman has no idea what she is talking about.”
“She misses the most basic point in that knives are an everyday item that actually have a purpose both in the workplace and at home.
“It’s impossible to ban them because they have an actual use beyond killing, unlike guns.
“Taylor Greene, like many Republicans, believes the answer to stopping the bloodshed is to have even more guns. It is nonsensical.” Taylor Greene, really known by some as Mad Marjorie, even tried to block recent legislation on gun ownership.
Another of her constituent, Carole Turner, told how she thought the US’s violence problem could be solved.
The 27-year-old pregnant care worker said: “The only way to stop the killings is at the ballot box. This is my first baby, and to think that the fundamental human right a child has to be safe in school does not exist in my country is frightening.
“Until we vote these weak politicians out, who are beholden to the gun lobby, child after child will still be killed in the classroom.”
