Virginia Republicans Continue to Spew Out Idiocy, Illogic, Internal Inconsistency on Gun Violence

[TexasTowelie]

As we know, Virginia Republicans are deep in the pockets of the gun lobby, and also terrified of their far-right base, which of course means that they will contort themselves into all sorts of unnatural positions in order to avoid talking about guns as part of the gun violence question. Instead, as you can hear in the following Trumpster radio interviews with Virginia State Sen. Bill DeSteph (R-SD8) and Sen. Amanda Chase (R-SD11), they are talking about everything else BUT guns. As Sen. Scott Surovell (D-SD36) tweeted this morning:

“So far, I’ve heard Republican elected officials blame USA’s mass shooting scourge on video games, gay marriage, recreational marijuana, role of fathers, school discipline, and the ultimate boogeyman – @BarackObama! Pretty clear to me what the problems is…. #EndGunViolence“

Sen. Surovell is exactly right, of course. And Senators DeSteph and Chase are exactly wrong. In the case of DeSteph, it’s particularly moronic “reasoning,” as he flails around about how somehow “this isn’t a gun control issue, this is a mental health issue,” completely ignoring the fact that people in every other country also have mental health problems (and video games, for that matter), yet the gun violence rates in those countries are wayyyyyy lower than they are in the United States. Gee, what could the difference between those countries and this country possibly be? The answer is glaringly obvious.

Yet for the Bill DeStephs of the world, it’s sooooo hard to understand. Thus, in the following interview, you can hear DeSteph talk about how it’s “mental health,” lack of sufficient “discipline in schools,” not enough “fathers in the families,” too many video games, blah blah blah. My favorite aspect of this interview, though, is how DeSteph keeps pleading ignorance, how he’s not “the subject-matter expert on this” topic and how “smart people” need to “study…the underlying issue,” yet despite admitting that he doesn’t know shit about gun violence prevention, DeSteph is absolutely confident about one thing: that it supposedly is NOT related to guns. Completely moronic and also internally illogical. Yet this guy’s somehow in the Virginia State Senate?!? That *must* change this November, when SD8 voters will hopefully elect Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal (who served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy) to replace the ignorant, bigoted buffoon Bill “Rub Me Lamp” DeSteph.

Read more: https://bluevirginia.us/2019/08/virginia-republicans-continue-to-spew-out-idiocy-illogic-internal-inconsistency-on-gun-violence