Ask any Republican or conservatives if we have a gun problem in America and they say'll no, we have a cultural problem.
Senator James Inhofe (R-Climate Denial) is one of those Republicans and he apparently believes our cultural problem can be found in sanctuary cities.
Inhofe spoke to Vox Media reporter Tara Golshan and said mass shootings happen because we're too "permissive."
INHOFE: There’s a cultural problem. There are a lot of problems in this country having to do with permissiveness. Having to do with — what about all these states that have laws that protect people who break laws? I mean, the cities that support [a culture of permissiveness] — that is something that certainly has a profound impact on people’s behavior. You can go ahead and break a law and you can come to a sanctuary city, and they wouldn’t enforce the laws.
GOLDSHAN: So you’re saying the presence of sanctuary cities is perpetuating the culture of the Las Vegas shooting?
INHOFE: I’m saying we’re inundated with permissive laws — that has a lot more to do with it than gun [ownership] laws. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.
If you're going to tell me the "permissiveness" of modern society is the cause of mass shootings, I'm going to ask you to explain your support for Donald fucking Trump; an amoral, thrice-married celebrity TV host who bragged about sexually assaulting women. "When you're a star, they let you do it." And that's just one example of Trump's "permissiveness."
Inhofe's description of so-called sanctuary cities is wrong, of course. Cities are not responsible for enforcing federal immigration law and they're under no obligation to do so under federal law. In fact, a federal court recently ruled that the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions cannot deny safety grants to sanctuary cities.
And in any event, a city refusing to act as immigration enforcement officers leading a 64-year-old retired white man to open fire on a country music festival is quite a fantastical stretch.
What happened to personal responsibility? Is that dead too, just like fiscal responsibility?
There's actually no daylight between saying we have a "gun problem" and a "cultural problem." Our problem is gun culture. Guns are the culture, and the culture is death.