'Dead kids can't read': House Democrat excoriates Republicans for banning books instead of guns

A Florida congressman on Wednesday assailed Republicans who oppose gun safety laws in the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville earlier this week that killed six people including three children.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) noted that the Nashville shooting suspect used an AR-15, the assault rifle of choice for most mass shooters that was banned from 1994 to 2004.

Moskowitz made his comments during a Committee on Oversight and Accountability meeting on crime in Washington D.C.

“There are six people that are dead in that school including three children because you guys got rid of the assault weapons ban,” Moskowitz said during an exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

“Because you guys made it easy for people who don't deserve to have weapons, who are mentally incapable of having weapons of war, being able to buy those weapons and go into schools.”

Before the exchange with Greene, Moskowitz said it was absurd to focus on relatively minor crimes such as public urination and car theft amid an ongoing mass shooting epidemic that nation is now experiencing.”

“You guys want to talk about DC public schools and crime? I don't I don't want to burst your bubble over there, but mass murder in schools is crime,” Moskowitz said.

“You want to talk about 1,300 cars being stolen, 550 people have been murdered in school. Who cares about the cars? What about the kids?”

”No hearing for them. 330,000 kids have experienced gun violence in this country. The number one killer of school-aged children in this country. Gun violence. How do you think for the parents who have had to bury their kids who have had to decide what to put their kids clothes, but their kids when they buried them? Or kind of box they have to pick out for their child or for when they come home?”

The exchange with Greene began after Moskowitz asked rhetorically whether anyone in the committee disagreed with his assertion that “murder in schools is murder.”

“I'll yield to anyone on this committee who disagrees that murder in schools is not murder,” he said.

“Is there any question?”

The far-right congresswoman from Georgia did not dispute Moskowitz’s characterization of school shootings being murderous, but instead cited her own lived experience and blamed the horrific incidents on gun laws.

“I was in 11th grade and Joe Biden made our school gun free school zones,” Greene said. “One of the students in my school brought three guns to school and our entire school went on lockdown, because he was the only person with a gun.”

“There was no good guy with a gun to protect us kids at school.”

Greene cited police who fatally shot the suspect in Monday’s shooting as an example of a “good guy with a gun” saving lives.

“So, if you want to have a good talk about schools, and protecting children, we need to talk about protecting our children the same way we protect our president, the way we protect our celebrities,” Greene said.

Moskowitz disputed the notion that an armed presence offers much deterrence, noting that in the aftermath of the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting, he supported School Resource Officers at every school.

“Did the good guys with the guns stop six people from getting murdered? No. But you know what? AR 15’s, have you ever seen what those bullets do to children? You know why you don't hunt with an AR 15 with a deer, because there's nothing left. And there's nothing left as these kids when people go into school and murder them while they're trying to read.

“You guys are worried about banning books – dead kids can't read.”

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