After yet another mass shooting featuring an assault-style weapon, Fox News contributor Ted Williams told the conservative channel’s audience that “we have to talk about guns” because AR-15s “are killing our babies.”
Two weeks after three children and three adults were killed in a Nashville school shooting, 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon was identified as the suspect in a Monday morning massacre in Louisville. Using an AR-15-style rifle and live-streaming the attack, police say Turgeon killed four people and injured nine more after opening fire in the Old National Bank Building.
Williams, a former D.C. homicide investigator and federal special agent, pointed to some of the similarities in the Nashville and Lousiville killings. Namely, that both suspects used similar weapons and raised alarms about their potential actions.
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“There is information out there and it’s not been confirmed by me… that this shooter had phoned a friend and said that he was suicidal and that he was going to shoot up a bank,” Williams told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto. “If that is the truth, then I think that we need to again look at what is going on in our society. You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!”
He continued: “Just two weeks ago, I stood in front of a camera—when you had some kids, some babies, shot in Nashville, Tennessee—where a person that had an AR-15! And from what we have been told here, Neil, this individual had that same kind of a weapon.”
After saying that mental illness combined with these weapons makes “a dangerous concoction,” Williams declared that “we’ve got to do something” because he’s “sick and tired of standing in front of a camera” to discuss these types of tragedies.
“Four people left home this morning,” Williams exclaimed. “And four people are not coming home tonight. That is something that we need to take into consideration.”
The Fox News analyst concluded by pushing back on the oft-repeated political talking point that it is too soon to talk about gun control or solutions immediately after a mass shooting.
“And when the governor says that we shouldn’t talk about certain things now, well then, I have to disagree with the government,” he insisted. “We have to talk about guns. AR-15 are killing our babies and our citizens in this country. And we’ve got to do something about it!”
Williams’ passionate plea, however, came shortly after another Fox News guest said he hoped lawmakers “don’t dwell on” guns and “that sort of thing” in the immediate aftermath of this most recent shooting.
Additionally, rather than focus on gun safety after the Nashville tragedy, much of the network quickly pushed alternative solutions such as “door control,” even though the shooter blasted through a locked door. Of course, after they discovered the suspect identified as transgender, they soon blamed the slaughter on a “deranged and demonic ideology.”
