GOP Lawmaker’s Solution to Preventing Mass Shootings: More Guns

Posted on Dec 16, 2012

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Although some Democrats have publicly advocated for tighter gun control laws or banning assault weapons in the aftermath of Friday’s shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and eight adults dead, one GOP lawmaker has a vastly different solution for curbing mass killings. According to Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, the way to prevent such massacres from happening is to have more Americans carry firearms.

Gohmert made a similar argument after the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., in July that claimed the lives of a dozen people.

“There has been great investigation and study into this,” he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “They choose this place [because] they know no one will be armed.”

The Huffington Post:

Gohmert argued that the mass slaughter would have gone differently if Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung had been armed.

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“Chris, I wish to god she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert said.

...So far, Gohmert appears to be one of the few pro-gun rights conservatives in Congress willing to make the public case for more guns in the wake of the Connecticut shooting. “Meet the Press” producer Betsy Fischer Martin tweeted Sunday that the show extended an invitation to 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to discuss the issue on the show and found no takers.

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In making his case for Second Amendment rights, Gohmert also added that the Founding Fathers wanted the public to be armed because “it ensures against the tyranny of the government if they know that the biggest army is the American people, then you don’t have the tyranny that came from King George.”

—Posted by Tracy Bloom.

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