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The vacation season is understood for its celebration of life, togetherness, and giving. However for some US politicians, spreading Christmas cheer has come to imply selling an more and more harmful gun tradition. In what seems to be the newest GOP development, Republican leaders have been posting their Christmas greetings with portraits of their households posing with military-grade weapons.
On December 4, Consultant Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted a Christmas greeting with a photograph of himself and his grinning household in entrance of a Christmas tree, armed to the tooth with assault weapons highly effective sufficient to steer a small militia.
The picture was posted simply 4 days after 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley allegedly killed 4 of his fellow college students and injured seven others at Oxford Excessive Faculty in Michigan in what was this yr’s deadliest college capturing. Simply someday earlier than the capturing, Crumbley was caught by lecturers looking for “ammo” on his telephone. Massie captioned the picture together with his want for Santa to “please carry ammo”.
Regardless of receiving backlash for the show of callous indifference in direction of the harmless lives misplaced, Massie’s submit impressed Consultant Lauren Boebert of Colorado to share her personal gun-filled Christmas household picture, that includes her younger youngsters.
This brazen promotion of gun tradition amongst youngsters – simply days after a lethal college capturing – is deeply disturbing. It displays a desensitisation to gun violence in a rustic the place mass shootings, and faculty shootings, particularly, have change into the “new regular”. It additionally exhibits that some Republican officers will cease at nothing – even killing the spirit of Christmas – to self-promote.
The statics on gun-related deaths within the US are actually appalling. Firearms have change into the main reason for dying for American youngsters and youngsters; these between the ages of 5 and 14 are 21 instances extra seemingly than youngsters in different high-income nations to be killed by gun violence. On common, eight American youngsters die every day from gun violence.
As youngsters spent extra time at dwelling within the first yr of the pandemic, with better entry to deadly weapons, unintentional gunshot deaths by minors jumped by 31 p.c from March to December 2020 in comparison with the identical interval in 2019. As faculties reopened this yr, college shootings returned with, 24 such incidents happening throughout the nation since August.
The pervasive nature of gun violence within the US has elevated policing of faculties and unfold nervousness amongst college students. American youngsters at the moment are attending faculties outfitted with steel detectors and safety cameras and are being subjected to common shooter drills.
Publicity to gun violence can affect a toddler’s emotional, psychological, and even bodily improvement, making it paramount that youngsters are shielded from gun tradition. Republicans, nevertheless, don’t appear to share this concern. In actual fact, they seem to consider that mental subjects like vital race concept are a way more harmful affect on college youngsters than gun tradition.
Massie and Boebert are by far not the pioneers of gun promotion amongst youngsters throughout Christmas. In 2015, for instance, Michelle Fiore, a Las Vegas Republican assemblywoman, brought on controversy by posting the same Christmas greeting card along with her armed household.
Unsurprisingly, it’s also not simply Republican officers who’ve turned to social media to brandish their love for weapons. The alleged Michigan shooter had additionally posted photos on-line displaying off his gun arsenal earlier than the assault. His mom, who’s charged alongside her husband with involuntary manslaughter as equipment to the capturing, captioned a submit of her personal, “Mother & son day testing out his new Xmas current.”
These posts get round current social media restrictions on gun promotion, as platforms have solely banned weapons sellers from promoting instantly on their websites (within the absence of presidency regulation).
The viral photos of Republican officers brandishing assault rifles throughout the web not solely serve political and industrial functions, but in addition represent a type of excessive trolling of liberals. They’re meant to antagonise liberal-minded People and enhance the recognition of the authors of those posts amongst their constituencies.
Satirically, of their pursuit of scoring political factors forward of the vacations, Republicans look like doing what they’ve lengthy accused liberals of: “waging a struggle” on Christmas. For years, conservatives have claimed that Christmas is “beneath assault” and its symbols and spirit are being ignored or violated by liberals and their rejection of Christian values.
However as Democratic Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in a re-tweet of Boebert’s picture, “Inform me once more the place Christ mentioned ‘use the commemoration of my beginning to flex violent weapons for private political achieve’?”
Maybe much more insidious than killing the Christmas spirit with gun tradition selling tweets is the GOP’s relentless effort to dam laws that seeks to extend regulation of gun possession.
Constant roadblocks positioned by Republicans, the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation, and the gun trade have made not solely passing any gun management measures troublesome however have even stifled analysis into gun violence. This has pressured some Democrats to go so far as adopting GOP-style ways to pursue regulation of gun possession.
For instance, California Governor Gavin Newsom prompt that lawmakers ought to cross a gun-control legislation that enables bizarre residents to sue those that deal in restricted weapons. The concept is to mannequin the laws after the anti-abortion legislation lately handed in Texas, which provides any citizen the correct to take to courtroom clinics or particular person medical doctors who violate the state’s abortion ban.
Making significant progress on gun management, nevertheless, would take greater than GOP-style ways. It’s time for President Joe Biden to make good on his marketing campaign promise to sort out the problem and push for decisive motion on gun violence. This could necessitate not solely harder gun possession legal guidelines but in addition combatting the normalisation of gun tradition.
The attainable prosecution of the Oxford shooter’s mother and father may very well be a step in the correct route – in direction of accountability for the promotion of gun tradition amongst youngsters. Subsequent, the gun foyer and politicians selling gun tradition should even be held to account.
Perhaps solely then would the vile exploitation of Christmas for political achieve by Massie, Boebert, and different Republican officers cease. And possibly solely then would we see GOP lawmakers opting to advertise messages of affection throughout Christmas. All of us might do with a few of that proper about now.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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