GOP ex-congressman: 'Politically correct culture' to blame for shooting

Scrambling to concoct a cover story that doesn’t implicate the NRA and GOP’s support for unlimited gun ownership, former Republican congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz tried to argue that America’s “politically correct culture” was to blame for the school shooting in Santa, Fe Texas, where 10 people were murdered.

Without having any idea who the Texas shooter is, what his background is, or what state of mind is, Chaffetz clumsily asserted that there’s some sort of liberal, PC campaign to make sure the mentally ill aren’t treated properly in the U.S. And therefore, they end up killing classmates.

“Obviously, this person is deranged. I can’t diagnose everything, it’s breaking news. But there’s something really wrong with this person, whatever that they did,” said Chaffetz, pushing the NRA narrative that only people who are “deranged” commit heinous gun crimes in America.

“And so, mental health and communities, I think they do need help and support in trying to figure out best practices, what can they do, how do we diagnose this person and how do we deal with it, because there’s this politically correct culture, particularly for people that are less than 18 years old, to say, well, let’s just keep them going in the system instead of actually dealing with it,” said Chaffetz

This kind of hollow rhetoric has become the Republicans’ go-to talking point in the wake of America’s never-end school shootings.

Following the February school massacre in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were murdered by a gunman with an AR-15, Trump blamed the local community for not stopping the “mentally disturbed” shooter.

The truth is that last year, Trump, in one of his first official actions as president, signed a GOP-passed bill that wiped out an Obama-era regulation that would have made it harder for mentally ill people to get guns.

In fact, “It it’s Trump’s party — and Trump himself — who have consistently prevented the federal government from doing anything about” the deadly mix of guns and mental illness, as Vox noted this year.

And Chaffetz knows that because he voted to overturn the ban to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill Americans.

Yet now, Chaffetz is lamenting a supposedly “politically correct culture” that helps put guns in the hands of the mentally ill. Chaffetz said nothing about the NRA — from whom he had an “A” rating in 2016, as he boasted on Facebook — which lobbied strenuously to make sure Trump undid the Obama-era gun initiative.

It was all part of the NRA’s mindless agenda of “pushing more guns, for more people, in more places,” as Everytown For Gun Safety President John Feinblatt said at the time.

More guns in more places means more schools are becoming targets.