Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right conspiracy spreader up for renomination in Tuesday’s primary elections in Georgia, was one of the first to jump into the fray with a call to oppose new gun control efforts after news of a school shooting broke in Uvalde, Texas.
The Trump acolyte hit Twitter in the minutes after news of the shooting’s death toll reaching 15 broke across news networks to declare that more efforts to restrict America’s rampant gun ownership, which far outpaces other countries that do not see such violence, was not necessary. The death toll was later revised upwards, with 19 students and two adults dead in the massacre.
“Our nation needs to take a serious look at the state of mental health today,” she argued.
“America is failing our youngest generations from decades of rejecting good moral values and teachings,” her tweet continued. “We don’t need more gun control. We need to return to God.”
The far-right freshman member of the House is up for reelection in November and on Tuesday faced several GOP candidates in a primary election. The state of the race was not immediately clear heading into the vote on Tuesday given the near-total lack of polling in the district and medley of scandals that Ms Greene has wandered into since taking office.
She was one of a number of lawmakers to have immediate reactions on Tuesday in the face of the shocking news out of Texas, where police said a 18-year-old high school student killed more than a dozen in a rampage at an elementary school.
Many Americans in general were questioning after the shooting whether Congress could be expected to do anything at all in response to the shooting, which like the racially-motivated massacre in Buffalo earlier this month now seems like an all-too-common occurence in modern-day US society. President Joe Biden was expected to speak on the shooting later in the evening.
The likelihood of any significant legislation addressing virtually any issue remains low for the rest of 2022 solely due to the makeup of the US Senate, which is evenly divided 50-50 among party lines and requires 60 votes to pass most bills.
The resulting political reality has left many despairing over whether the increasingly-common tragedies will be addressed meaningfully by the US govenment in the near or even long-term future.
