” Merry Christmas ! PS: Father Christmas, bring ammunition ”… It is with this comment that Thomas Massie, US elected representative of the Republican Party posted a photo on Twitter showing him with his family, all smiles in front of a Christmas tree adorned with garlands … and guns in hand.
What spark a heated controversy just days after a new murderous shooting in a high school in Michigan (north) during which a teenager killed four students. A tragedy that has become recurrent in a country where gun violence has been called an “epidemic” by President Biden.
LMAO pic.twitter.com/tSVVdCN8EA
– Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) December 4, 2021
A pistol offered as an early Christmas present
The parents of the 15-year-old shooter, charged with manslaughter, had given their son the Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistol as an early Christmas present. In this context, the family photo of Thomas Massie, representative of Kentucky in the lower house of the United States Congress, caused an uproar, elected officials or relatives of shooting victims accusing the Republican of insensitivity.
“Outrageous,” Democrat John Yarmuth wrote, saying such messages amounted to “blatantly taking child murder in the face.” Republican Adam Kinzinger, saying he is in favor of the right to carry a weapon, tweeted that it was “not a support for the right to hold and carry a weapon” but “a fetishism”.
Such an image “is a big part of the problem”
Activist Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, one of the worst school massacres in America, has posted his own “family photos.” “One is the last photo I took of Jaime, the other shows where she is buried. Manuel Oliver, father of another Parkland victim, told CNN that such an image was “a big part of the problem”, and “should teach us who to elect, and not.”
Conversely, conservative political commentator Candace Owens tweeted to her nearly three million subscribers, “Could someone explain to me how they can blame the Michigan shooting on Thomas Massie, because shared a photo of himself and his family holding legal guns? “
The Michigan high school shooting is the deadliest of some 130 in schools this year, according to the Everytown For Gun Safety organization.