Whether falsely accusing a female teacher in Uvalde, Texas of failing to close a door completely, making pointed references to fatherlessness homes, or bemoaning the fact that incels can’t date the hot chicks, the GOP is determined to shift the blame for mass shootings from the male perpetrators that routinely commit these atrocities to the women who are disproportionately victims of them.
Case in point is GOP Congress congresscritter Billy Long, a former auctioneer who hopes to trade his House seat, for which he is unqualified, for one in the Senate, for which he is eminently unqualified.
Long recently went one a Missouri radio station to say This:
“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year,” he said. “Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri.
“So something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion, when we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks.”
HuffPo did some fact checking on Long’s BS because, you know, a Republican was saying it, and got the facts:
“The data doesn’t support that claim. The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 established abortion rights in the U.S.
In 1970, 499 murders were reported in Missouri. in 1975, the figure was 505. And in 2019, 568 murders were reported in the state.“
Here is the audio:
Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) blames gun violence on abortion: "Something has happened to our society. 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." pic.twitter.com/RHAjakjHiG
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) June 1, 2022
If you listened you’ll note that Long also said that “Armalite” and “AKs” have not been used to shoot up classrooms. This bit of sophistry is grounded in the fact that “Armalite” is a specific manufacture of rifles… that is why all the knockoffs, including the Bushmaster XM used in Sandyhook, Connecticut and the Daniel Defense DDM4V7 used in Uvalde have to be called ARs. AKs are not used in mass-shootings because they are illegal to own here in the states, as AR’s should be, because they are fully automatic weapons. The guy who shot up the WalMart in El Paso a couple of years ago, however, used a Czech manufactured WASR-10 which is an AK modified to semi-automatic and so sanctioned by the U.S. for use in murdering a lot of people…
So Long is either stupid or lying here, I am torn. Though this tweet argues strongly for stupid…
My #MOSen platform 1.) Get @KamalaHarris to resign 2.) Have @POTUS appoint #Trump as VP 3.) Get @JoeBiden to resign 4.) Finish #KeystoneXL 5.) Finish the wall
— Billy Long (@auctnr1) June 2, 2022
Brilliant! Why didn’t Louie Gohmert think of that?
I would love to hear he’s going to accomplish either of his first two points. Even if he somehow managed to accomplish #1, the very notion that Joe Biden would nominate Trump (you remember–the guy Biden defeated in 2020) as Harris’s replacement is beyond absurd.
If Biden did have to nominate a new VP, I’d love it if he really shoved it in the right-wing nuts’ collective face by naming Barack Obama as his new VP. If he really wanted to see heads explode on the far right, he’d name Hillary Clinton to the job.
And, despite the overall suck-up to Trump tone he’s taken in the twit–I mean, tweet (or DO I?)–Trump didn’t exactly run on the Keystone pipeline. The “Wall” was Trump’s pet project and to put it in the position he did, he runs the risk of incurring the Wrath of Trump.
He looks like he’s spent way too much time at all-you-can-eat places. (I doubt he tips.) I am not surprised he has no clue what’s really going on outside his very small world.
I don’t make fat jokes anymore (lesson learned at Dkos) but I live in Long’s district and in 2012 I wrote (and performed a couple of times) a campaign song for his Democratic opponent…
Refrain (to the tune of Wabash Cannonball):
? Old Billy he’s a wonder,
He’s wide as he’s tall,
He’s the scourge of the Buffet Line,
He’s the D.C. Cannonball. ?
Well, you could honestly make jokes about his neck being wider than his head. He’s on the way to heart failure, I’d guess.
He should be, but many not the top seem to want to prove that only the good die young.
If abortion rights was the issue, then why wouldn’t they be done by angry women aiming at the republicans making and breaking precedent law or making mockery? So far as I know, every single mass murderer was male and never grew to emotional maturity no matter physical age. I suspect this is true of all gun fetishists from NRA to Senators and Justices. More smoke blowing.