GOP lawmaker slammed for ridiculous take on ‘nothing like gun violence’

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) seemed more concerned about embryos and unborn fetuses than living children Wednesday as he downplayed gun violence following a mass shooting that left six dead in a school in Tennessee.

“There is no armed violence. There is only human violence. It is intellectually unsound to say otherwise,” he told a House Oversight Committee hearing. “And the number one killer of children in America remains abortion.”

Many Americans, including Democratic politicians, have renewed their calls for better gun control laws in the wake of Monday’s shooting, but are meeting resistance from Republicans, many of whom receive significant financial support of the gun lobby.

Higgins criticized Democrats for repeatedly bringing up the statistic that gun violence is the leading cause of child deaths in the United States.

This statistic is true, however. In 2020, firearms overtook car crashes as the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 1 to 18.

Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of child deaths in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database. According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, in no other country so large or wealthy is gun death among the top four causes of death among children.

Road accidents and cancer are the two most common causes of death among people aged 1 to 18 in all other comparable countries, KFF found. The United States has by far the most lax gun laws and the most civilian-owned guns of its peers.

This year alone, there have been 130 mass shootings in the United States, according to Gun Violence Archive.

Higgins cited CDC data from 2020 to say there were more than 620,000 legal abortions performed that year, comparing that number to the number of children — 4,357 — killed by guns.

The vast majority of abortion procedures take place during the first trimester of pregnancy (before or at 13 weeks gestation for an embryo or fetus). Fetal viability, defined as the point at which survival of a fetus may be possible outside the womb, would be around 23 to 24 weeks gestation in the United States.

Social media users pointed out flaws in Higgins’ “human violence” argument:

Other commentators have observed that Higgins’ self-proclaimed “pro-life” position does not seem to apply to living children:

Higgins is staunchly anti-abortion and pro-Second Amendment, and says on his House webpage that life “unquestionably begins at conception.”

He has already made headlines for other inflammatory remarks. In 2020, he threatened to shoot any armed protesters before a Black Lives Matter rally, even though people are allowed to openly carry guns in Louisiana. And in September, he was slammed as a racist and misogynist after he yelled and made offensive comments at a black climate expert testifying in Congress.

Three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed Monday at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, after a 28-year-old shooter, who police say legally purchased the two assault rifles and pistol they were brandishing, opened fire. .