During a House Judiciary Committee markup of gun control legislation on Thursday, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California questioned whether Republican lawmakers had shown up for murderers or for children.
“If you’re not here for the children, why don’t you go to the funeral” for the murderer, Swalwell asked, saying that it would be the single “place where the killer is being celebrated.”
Last week, 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old man who perpetrated a shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
Democrats are pushing gun control legislation and claiming that it would help solve the problem of shootings in the U.S.
“To infer by rhetorical supposed questions … we must be here for the gunman, is an outrage. How dare you,” GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said on the heels of Swalwell’s remarks. “Democrats control the major cities” with “the worst murder rates. That’s right. Your ideas have been shown to get people killed. Are you here for … the murderers in Chicago, in Philadelphia, in these other major cities? Because you’re wanting to do nationally what is being done by Democrats in those big cities.”
“We’re not alleging you don’t care, we’re … telling you that your ideas have gotten people killed, not saved lives,” Gohmert declared.
Swalwell has previously claimed that Republicans “want to ban interracial marriage.” He has also referred to Republicans as “the party of mass shooters,” and indicated that he would not be surprised if the GOP targeted the right of women to vote.
“Ban and buy-back every single assault weapon. We won’t even be the first country to do it,” the lawmaker tweeted last week
Swalwell has served in Congress since 2013 — in 2019, he announced a presidential bid, but then dropped out later the same year.
During the markup on Thursday, Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York told Republicans, “You will not stop us from advancing the Protecting Our Kids Act today. You will not stop us from passing it in the House next week. And you will not stop us there. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it. And we will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation in our communities.”
Markup: H.R. 7910, the “Protecting Our Kids Act”
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