Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted New York’s gun laws and called on its Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul to pass ‘constitutional carry’ laws
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) blamed New York’s strict gun control laws for a mass shooting that occurred at a Brooklyn subway station on Tuesday morning.
New York City’s mass transit system was targeted by an unknown gunman during rush hour, when a suspect reportedly wearing a construction vest and a gas mask reportedly set off a smoke bomb and opened fire inside a train car.
Witnesses have said the train pulled into the 36th Street station in the working class, predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park in south Brooklyn, where they saw the car filled with smoke and screaming riders.
Footage from the scene shows people lying on the blood-stained ground. The FDNY said at least 10 people were shot, though no one was killed. The suspect is still at large as of Tuesday afternoon, with police looking for a U-Haul truck with Arizona license plates, according to CNN. High-capacity magazines and gun powder were reportedly found at the scene.
Hours after the shooting, Greene took to Twitter to question how many ‘innocent people’ could have been armed if New York’s firearm laws were less strict.
‘With New York’s strict gun control laws, how many innocent people were carrying a gun when the bad guy with a gun broke the existing laws and started shooting people?’ the Republican firebrand said.
‘Bad guys don’t care about gun control and gun control only stops people from being able to protect themselves.’
Guns laws are significantly more relaxed in her home state of Georgia — no training is required to obtain a firearms license at a minimum age of 18, and Governor Brian Kemp recently signed a law that would allow residents to conceal carry a handgun without obtaining a special permit to do so.
The lawmaker claimed ‘guns don’t kill people’ by themselves on Tuesday afternoon, a well-worn argument for pro-gun advocates.
The largest mass transit system in the country was targeted by a gunman who set off a smoke device and opened fire in a subway car in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood
Ten people were shot by the gunman, who is still at large, according to the FDNY
‘Guns don’t kill people. Murderers kill people and sometimes they use a gun as a tool to kill people. They also use knives, hammers, cars, their bare hands and other ways to kill people,’ Greene said.
‘But a good guy with a gun uses the gun to defend himself and others around him.’
She added, ‘I carry a gun, sometimes quite a few. I will ALWAYS DEFEND American’s RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS!’
‘As a woman & mother, I will unload my clip on a killer attacking me, my family, or others. Then I will reload.’
It’s not clear how many guns Greene carries at a time or what situations she was describing. DailyMail.com has reached out to her office for comment.
Speaking in Sunset Park on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul promised to crack down on the surge in crime that’s gripped the Big Apple along with other major cities.
‘No more mass shootings, no more disrupting lives, no more creating heartbreak for people just trying to live their lives as normal New Yorkers. It has to end and it ends now,’ Hochul told reporters.
Greene claimed she carried ‘quite a few’ guns and claimed firearms control only ‘stops people from being able to protect themselves’ in multiple statements on Twitter in the wake of the shooting
‘I’m committing the full resources of our state to fight this surge of crime, this insanity that is seizing our city, because we want to get back to normal.’
Greene heckled the Democratic governor’s comments on Twitter.
‘Pass Constitutional Carry in New York and crime will drop to extremely low levels. Gun control laws only create victims bc bad guys don’t care about laws,’ the Republican wrote.
‘Allow people to defend themselves and others.’
The congresswoman, a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, has been known to hold extreme views on gun violence in the country.
She reportedly agreed with a Facebook user who claimed the Parkland, Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people was a false flag operation, according to a Washington Post report from this year.
Greene reportedly wrote on the platform in 2018: ‘I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.’
Her ideology runs counter to that of President Joe Biden, who called for tighter federal gun control laws the night before Tuesday’s shooting.
‘We need Congress to pass universal background checks. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability,’ the president said in a statement on Twitter.
On Monday, Biden announced a further crackdown on ghost guns, which he called ‘weapons of choice for many criminals’ in comments at the White House.
The unregulated, untraceable weapons are shipped to buyers in kits that are then easily assembled into a working weapon.
The president said the new regulatory measures are ‘common sense.’
‘If you buy a couch you have to assemble, it’s still a couch. If you order a package like this one over here that includes that parts that you need and directs the assembly of a functioning firearm, you bought a gun,’ he said.
Gun violence has increased nationwide since the pandemic. On Saturday, four people were shot after a Major League Baseball game in Washington, DC.
More than a dozen other people were injured in shootings across the country over the weekend in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa.
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