My Tuesday column and familiar territory:
At approximately 8 a.m. eastern time on Monday, a man named Aaron Alexis, a former reservist with the U.S. Navy, entered the Naval Sea Systems Command office building at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 10 others. The gunman used a shotgun, a handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle to rain bullets into a crowd of people before eventually being shot and killed by police.
At 2:15 p.m., six hours after the massacre, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) tweeted the following sentiment to his followers: “Remember to keep praying for those affected by both the Navy Yard shootings and the Colorado floods.”
A noble gesture — that is if you ignore the irony that the congressman is a vocal climate crisis denier, as well as one of the NRA’s most valuable allies inside the House of Representatives with a creepy obsession with AR-15 assault rifles, say nothing of being one of the only internet trolls serving as a member of Congress.
His request for prayers appears more cosmetic and hollow knowing that even after an AR-15 had been used as the weapon of choice during the Aurora movie theater massacre last Summer, and once again during the heart-wrenching massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school, Rep. Stockman held not one but two wacky contest giveaways this year in which a Bushmaster AR-15 was the grand prize, clearly because it became the most infamous firearms in modern history after Sandy Hook. (Why else, out of thousands of other firearms, did he choose that one?)
Ghoulish and macabre barely scratches the surface in describing Stockman’s gun giveaways, especially considering the infamy of the specific weapon… [CONTINUE READING]