Texas congressman Louie Gohmert delivered an emotional rebuttal in defense of gun rights during a House gun reform hearing Thursday.
The Republican who represents much of East Texas, including Tyler, Longview and Marshall, was incensed by earlier remarks from California congressman Eric Swalwell, who questioned whether some Republicans were more concerned with holding onto unfettered gun rights than making sure children are safe from gun violence in schools.
“If you are not here for the children, why don’t you go to the funeral of the killer,” the Democrat asked in the wake of the Uvalde massacre in which a shooter killed 21, including 19 kids at an elementary school. Several more mass shootings have occurred since the Uvalde murders, including four people murdered by a gunman at a Tulsa hospital on Wednesday.
Gohmert, who was joining the hearing via Zoom, took issue with Swalwell’s characterization.
“When 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 other’s rights to live, to infer by rhetorical, supposed questions, ‘Who are you here for?’ (that) we must be here for the gunmen, is an outrage,” Gohmert said. “How dare you? You think that we don’t have hearts? It’s just that when we look at the things you are doing and you are trying to do to America, we’ve seen the carnage. For heaven’s sake.”
Gohmert tried to peg the gun violence issues on America’s largest cities and named Chicago and Philadelphia as examples. He suggested Democratic-led gun reforms in some of those cities have proven ineffective.
Of course, that doesn’t address the mass murders in Uvalde, a rural town of 15,000 in south Texas, and in Tulsa, which is the 48th largest city withslightly more than 400,000 residents. In fact, 10 people were shot to death in Buffalo, New York, by a lone gunman on May 14. Buffalo is America’s 90th largest city with about 253,000.
“Let’s take for example, Democrats control the major cities that have the worst murder rates. That’s right,” Gohmert said. “Your ideas have been shown to get people killed. Are you here for the murderers in Chicago, in Philadelphia, and in these other major cities, because you’re wanting to do nationally what is being done by Democrats in those big cities.
“We care about people. We care about their lives. And lives have been so trivialized. We care deeply,” he continued. “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.”
Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat, corrected Gohmert about Philadelphia. She pointed out that Republican legislators in the state have blocked city leaders from restricting gun control.
