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In a sane country that actually valued human lives, last weeks mass shooting in Texasor, the one before that in Buffalo, or thousands before that in the years priorwould have marked the moment the elected officials whove refused to pass gun control legislation looked in the mirror and decided to stop being part of the problem.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a sane country, and instead of actually doing something to prevent these atrocities from occurring all the timein case you missed it, there have been 17 mass shootingssince Uvalde, TexasRepublicans have launched a competition in which they duke it out to see who can come up with the most ridiculous thing to blame mass shootings on besides guns. So far, thats included too many doors; not enough God; pot; single moms; unarmed teachers; and schools being designed without trip wires and man traps.

Obviously, the competition is fierce. But that didnt scare Missouri representative and Senate candidate Billy Long, who rolled up to Wednesdays interview with a local radio station withand excuse the phrase though we assume hell appreciate itthe big guns. Asked by host Branden Rathert if Is there any appetite in D.C. amongst Republicans to look at doing some things differently as it relates to guns, Long responded that No one has been able to come up with any kind of suggestion that would have helped in any of these situations fact-check: false! and that passing gun control measures is not the solution to the epidemic of gun violence. Unfortunately, theyre trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies,he said. Then he added: When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mothers wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks.

As Jezebels Laura Bassett noted, thats a pretty rich explanation given that you dont typically hear about mass shootings being carried out by women whove undergone abortions, probably because mass shootings are almost exclusively the domain of men, a not insignificant number of which are violent misogynists (and racists and antisemites, etc). The U.K. legalized abortion five years before the U.S., yet strangely, it doesnt seem to have the same problem with mass shootings. If Long and his ilk were actually serious about preventing thousands of Americans being killed by guns every year, they might wonder why. Hint: It doesnt have to do with clotted cream or corgis. (Just so its clear: The actual reason that more mass shootings occur in the U.S. than any other wealthy country the answerthe only answeris the astronomical number of guns in this country.)

Elsewhere in conservative bullshit re: guns, on Wednesday, Doug Mastriano, the Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor, shared and doubled down on a 2018 video of him likening gun control to the policies of Adolf Hitler. Its appalling to me any time theres a shooting, the left will jump on that as a way to advance an agenda to remove our right to bear arms, Mastriano says in the clip. We saw Lenin do the same thing in Russia. We saw Hitler do the same thing in Germany in the 30s. Where does it stop? Where do the tyrants stop infringing upon our rights?

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Republican Congressman Blames Mass Shootings on Women Having Rights - Vanity Fair