New House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., drew backlash on Thursday after arguing that guns are not the problem in response to another mass shooting.
Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday questioned Johnson about Democratic calls for stricter federal gun laws after 18 people were killed and 13 others wounded at a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston, Maine.
“The end of the day, the problem is the human heart,” Johnson said. “It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that’s the Second Amendment. And that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
Johnson: At the end of the day the problem is the human heart. It's not guns, it's not the weapons. pic.twitter.com/TLhaDTvnIo
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 27, 2023
House Democrats fired back at Johnson for blaming the “human heart” for mass shootings.
“It’s actually the f**king weapons,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., wrote on X.
“No, it’s the guns,” wrote Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine.
“Humans have hearts in every nation on Earth. This is the only country that has a mass shooting almost every day. It’s the guns,” agreed Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va.
Johnson, who played a key role in the Republican effort to overturn the 2020 election, blamed abortion for school shootings shortly after he was elected to the House in 2015, according to New York Magazine’s Irin Carmon.
“Many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters,” Johnson told Carmon at the time.
Johnson during a sermon in 2016 also blamed mass shootings on the teaching of evolution.
“People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we’ve taught a whole generation, a couple generations now of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and you evolve from the primordial slime,” he said while speaking at Christian Center Shreveport in a clip flagged by MeidasTouch. “Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”
Johnson spent years working as an attorney for conservative groups, defending restrictions on abortion and homosexuality. Hannity on Thursday questioned Johnson about criticism over his arguments against gay marriage and sex.
“I don’t even remember some of them,” Johnson replied. “I was a litigator that was called upon to defend the state marriage amendments. If you remember back in the early 2000s, I think there [were] over 35 states, somewhere in that number, that the people went to the ballot in their respective states and they amended their state constitutions to say marriage is one man and one woman. Well, I was a religious liberty defense and was called to defend those cases in the courts.”
Johnson added that he “genuinely” loves all people regardless of their “lifestyle choices” because he is a “Bible-believing Christian.”
“Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘it’s curious, people are curious. “What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?”’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.’”
Speaker Mike Johnson tonight: “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” pic.twitter.com/ylMWX1XVJy
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 27, 2023
