Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) roundly dismissed the need for any modest and incremental gun-safety measures on Sunday, insisting that the implementation of new gun laws would lead to a “dictatorial government at the federal level.”
Additionally, the Republican Senate hopeful rejected adding age restrictions on gun sales, boasting about the number of times he went to high school with a “shotgun” in his car.
After an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas last week, the vast majority of Americans have expressed support for stricter gun control legislation and background checks. Conservatives, however, have offered up unserious solutions like door control and “man traps,” while blaming critical race theory, “wokeness,” and too much gun control for the deadly massacre.
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Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Brooks was asked about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that he has “encouraged” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to engage with Democrats on a “bipartisan” solution to gun violence.
“Would you support any changes, sir, to the current gun laws on the books?” Fox News anchor Sandra Smith asked.
“The Second Amendment is designed to help ensure that we, the citizenry, always have the right to take back our government should it become dictatorial,” Brooks, who called on Capitol rioters to “kick ass” ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection, declared. “That was a great fear of the founding fathers and quite frankly, it’s a fear today.”
The ultra-conservative lawmaker added: “And as long as we enjoy uninfringed Second Amendment rights, then we don't really have to worry that much about the government ever becoming dictatorial. But the moment that we take from our citizenry our ability to take our government back is the moment that the ability of dictatorial forces increases to the point where perhaps they will try to implement a dictatorial government at the federal level. So I want to protect the Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
After Brooks said he would only consider laws that “guarantee the right” of Americans to “freely exercise” the right to bear arms, Smith pressed him on his state’s lax gun laws.
“Sir, the minimum age in your state to buy an AR-15, like the one the school shooter used in Uvalde, is 18 years old,” she noted. “There’s no waiting period between the time that a firearm is purchased and when it’s actually turned over to the buyer. There’s no license for the sale of ammunition. Gallup research does find that a majority of Americans—52 percent of them—are in favor of stricter gun laws when it comes to the sale of firearms. So to the majority of Americans who feel that way, you say what?”
The Alabama congressman insisted that easy access to assault weapons is no issue because when he was a teenager he used to drive around with firearms all the time.
“I expect that the people who were polled by way of example were not properly explained what the purpose of the Second Amendment right to bear arms is, and I will use my own history as an example,” he said. “There are many times when I went to school with a shotgun in my car. Why? Because I just got through duck hunting. There were other teenagers my age at that point in time that also brought their weapons to school and they had been hunters, too, for whatever it is the hunting season was about.”
Brooks also claimed that mass shootings had only begun occurring in recent years and that “they didn’t occur” when he was a young man. While such incidents have certainly increased over the past two decades, the University of Texas tower shooting took place in 1966, when Brooks was 12 years old.
The Republican lawmaker then parroted other conservatives’ talking points about liberal policies and a “decline of moral values” being to blame for the rise in mass shootings, specifically tying the issue to single-parent households and the decline of the “respect for life.”
Smith asked Brooks whether or not it was appropriate for the National Rifle Association to hold its annual convention this past week, just days after the Uvalde slaughter. While former President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-X) spoke, a number of other GOP politicians canceled their scheduled appearances.
“I am not going to comment on the meeting in Texas because I'm not a part of it,” he replied. “But I very much appreciate that the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and the National Association of Gun Rights have endorsed me in this United States Senate race in Alabama over all other comers.”
Brooks, a loud “Big Lie” proponent who was nonetheless unendorsed by Trump for being too “woke” on the 2020 election, then spent the last half of the interview falsely asserting that Trump was “robbed” during the last presidential election. He even went so far as to promote conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza’s election fraud fantasy film 2000 Mules to make his case—only for Smith to rebuke him.
“That has been looked at and fact-checked by multiple outlets, including Reuters, who have debunked that as any sort of proof that there was widespread voter fraud,” she pushed back.
D’Souza has railed against Fox News for weeks now over the network ignoring his latest conspiratorial documentary, essentially costing him his frequent guest appearances on primetime host Laura Ingraham’s program and making an enemy out of the conservative cable giant.
