In the wake of the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio mass shootings, the pressure is on Republicans to pass gun control laws.
The Hill reports that the House Republican Conference recently circulated a memo ?— dated August 6 and written by Richard Hudson ?— to rank-and-file members that focused on the party’s strategy of dealing with the current call for gun control legislation. The memo focused on how to respond to questions about the party’s opposition to gun restrictions and suggested that the GOP focus on violence committed by Democrats.
“In most cases, the media coverage has portrayed Democrats as caring and trying to do something and Republicans as uncaring and unwilling to do anything,” Hudson wrote.
“The truth is all Americans are affected by these shootings, and we all want to do something.”
The memo suggests that Republicans asked whether they believe white nationalism is behind the increase in mass shootings focus on “violence from the left.” Although the memo condemns white nationalism, it urges Republicans to focus on left extremism and push the idea that violence is happening on both sides.
“We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the Dayton shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ shooter, and Antifa,” the memo reads.
Despite Hudson’s claims, little evidence supports the idea that the Dayton, Colorado, or Giffords’ shooter were influenced by left-wing politics. Conversely, the El Paso suspect, Patrick Crusius, echoed much of Trump’s rhetoric against immigrants and described an “invasion” of the United States. However, per The Inquisitr , he also spoke of other problems outside of race, including climate change, the overpopulation of Earth, and job losses due to automation.
Congressional Republicans circulated talking points on gun violence that falsely described the El Paso massacre and other mass shootings as “violence from the left.” If asked about “white nationalism,” the suggested response was to blame “both sides.” https://t.co/9vyVQc4UW8
— Tim O’Brien (@TimOBrien) August 17, 2019
Per The Inquisitr , FBI Director Christopher Wray said last month that most domestic terrorism cases are caused by white supremacists.
“I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence,” Wray said, per Newsweek .
Yahoo News reported that Donald Trump’s administration attempted to bury a Department of Justice report that revealed all 2018 race-based domestic terrorism in the United States was the result of white supremacists. In addition, of all the 32 identified incidents of domestic terrorism ?— race-based or not ?— more than half were white supremacists.
Republican presidential candidate Bill Weld has attacked Trump’s purported appeasement of white supremacists and suggested that he is aligning with neo-Nazi groups on immigration.
