Rep. Eric Swalwell blasted President Trump for sending “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the Poway, Calif., Chabad synagogue shooting on Saturday, suggesting that the president’s inaction on gun control measures was to blame for the attack. Swalwell, a Democratic presidential candidate, took issue with a tweet from the president.
“Thoughts and prayers to all of those affected by the shooting at the Synagogue in Poway, California,” the president tweeted. “God bless you all. Suspect apprehended. Law enforcement did outstanding job. Thank you!”
Thoughts and prayers to all of those affected by the shooting at the Synagogue in Poway, California. God bless you all. Suspect apprehended. Law enforcement did outstanding job. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2019
Swalwell retweeted Trump and added, “Spare us your thoughts and prayers. It’s an alibi for inaction. You told the NRA yesterday you’d keep dangerous guns in the hands of dangerous people. We will take it from here with action.”
Spare us your thoughts and prayers. It’s an alibi for inaction. You told the NRA yesterday you’d keep dangerous guns in the hands of dangerous people. We will take it from here with action. https://t.co/YrCMhuIhk0
— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) April 27, 2019
For the record, Trump didn’t actually say that. What he did say is this: “Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns.” Which is absolutely true. Swalwell, you may recall, suggested that if he’s elected president he would consider using the country’s nuclear arsenal to force law-abiding gun owners to turn in their firearms.
Swalwell called in to CNN on Saturday to spread around some more blame. “If you really start to think about it, [such an attack] is not hard to imagine at all. We’re in a country where we have unrestricted weaponry and we have growing hate groups, where we see a failure of leadership to denounce them, and that is a deadly combination.”
This guy clearly has a problem with the truth. There are plenty of restrictions on what Swalwell calls “weaponry.” The vast majority of gun purchases require a federal background check and there are heavy federal restrictions on automatic firearms, such as machine guns, as well as short-barreled shotguns and rifles.
“A lot of people are just fed up with hearing ‘thoughts and prayers’ as an alibi for doing nothing,” he reiterated on CNN.
“It’s not just background checks, which I would sign into law, it’s banning and buying back the 15 million assault rifles that are in our communities and it looks like the weapon that was used today.”
Again — federal background checks are already required for the vast majority of gun purchases. And “buying back” so-called assault rifles (any rifle used in an assault is an assault rifle) is a ridiculous proposal. Americans are loath to give up their right to self-defense — buy-back programs that have been tried have been utter failures. Americans use their guns to hunt, for sport, and most importantly, to keep their families safe. Swalwell is delusional if he thinks law-abiding citizens are going to give that up for a crummy gift card or a wad of cash.
Swalwell denied that he’s “politicizing a tragedy.”
“I think the people who were shot today would have appreciated someone who did something, like a dangerous weapon like the one that got in the hands of the shooter,” he said. “We’re told that this is a divisive issue by the people who want us to do nothing. I’ve come to see that is actually a tactic, it’s not where most Americans are.” For the record, the rabbi who was shot at his synagogue on Saturday was grateful for the call he received from Trump on Saturday: “He was just so comforting, I’m really grateful to our president for taking the time and making that effort to share with us his comfort and consolation,” said Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein.
Swalwell, like most gun-grabbers, doesn’t’ know the first thing about firearms and demonstrated his ignorance during the CNN segment: “Keep your pistols, keep your shotguns, keep your rifles. I just happen to believe that some weapons are too dangerous and belong only on battlefields.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
He also attributed shootings like the one at the California synagogue to a lack of tolerance in society and said schoolchildren need to be indoctrinated to learn “diversity and tolerance as soon as possible” — the virulent anti-Christian Democrat version of “tolerance” no doubt. (Teaching kids the biblical principle of the “Golden Rule” — love your neighbor as yourself — worked for hundreds of years in America. Maybe we ought to go back to that?)
“It’s mostly, it’s having a president, when he or she sees suffering that their instinct would be to heal us. When he or she sees division, that their instinct would be to unite us. I think that’s missing right now in America,” Swalwell said. He vowed the “white nationalism will get more attention” in Congress in the coming months.
Here’s a thought: Maybe Swalwell should start by cleaning up his own party — which has become a hotbed for anti-Semitism in recent months — and leave law-abiding gun owners alone.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member