A Newsmax host seemed to suggest Friday that recent school shootings are the result of students not bringing guns to class, saying that when children did so decades ago there were “no mass shootings” and “no problems.”
Carl Higbie, in an interview with Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) focusing on the assault weapons ban that passed the house earlier in the day, showed a clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) criticizing the methods that “some totally irresponsible people” use to train their young children in firearms usage. Higbie took offense at her remarks.
“I’d say it’s about a hundred years ago, these so-called toddlers and 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds used to carry guns to school as a completely normal thing in a lot of areas of the country–and probably even more recently than a hundred years ago. No mass school shootings, no problems,” Higbie claimed sweepingly, to which Steube agreed.
Higbie, who worked for a Super PAC that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, also boasted that he taught his 9-year-old how to use an AR-15.
“Do you think that guns, as Nancy Pelosi says, are really the problem?” asked the Iraq War veteran and 2014 Connecticut congressional candidate.
“Of course they’re not the problem,” replied Steube, who, as a sign of his devotion to the Second Amendment, couldn’t help but show off his gun collection during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month on gun reform.
Steube then compared firearms to cars and cooking devices.
“Should we ban vehicles because they kill people?” he asked. “Should we ban pressure cookers that the Boston [Marathon] bomber used because they used those to kill people? No, that’s just a tool and the instrument that terrorists, murderers and criminals use to commit their crimes.”