The Trace
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is whatever gun-policy advocate you need him to be. On Sunday, in the aftermath of the Lafayette movie-theater shooting by John Houser, a 59-year-old man with a history of violence and instability, Jindal took to the talk shows to position himself as strict on gun access. “Here in Louisiana, we actually passed tougher laws a couple of years ago, so that, for example, if Houser had been involuntarily committed here in Louisiana, that information would automatically — we would have reported that to the national background check system,” Jindal said on Face the Nation, adding that “every state should strengthen their laws.” He didn’t mention that his administration had gutted Louisiana’s already abysmally low mental health funding, how the state continued to top most of the nation in gun deaths, or how Houser could have avoided a Louisiana background check altogether by buying his guns from a private seller or gun show.
Here’s a prediction: Calling for valuable but limited expansion of information that’s available for background checks on (some) gun purchases is likely the high watermark for action that Jindal and fellow conservatives will brook in the aftermath of the latest fatal shooting spree. The clues are in the way they talked about guns, and especially their personal firearms, leading up to this summer’s outbreak of high-profile shootings.
The only thing that I have noticed when republican politicians talk publicly about their guns or stage silly photo-ops is that they usually look pretty goofy.
ReplyDeleteI mean, what kind of an idiot is going to pose for a picture holding his brand new gun that some lobbyist just gave him with an ear-to-ear shit-eating grin? I don't mean to impugn males. There are a few women that do this.