Ohio GOP House nominee says mass shootings are a fair trade for his 2nd Amendment rights

A Republican House candidate for a competitive seat in northwest Ohio said Monday that mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for his right to own guns.

“I don’t care if countries in Europe have less shootings because they don’t have guns. I care about THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and OUR 2nd Amendment Rights,” Republican J.R. Majewski tweeted Monday evening. “I think Americans stopped caring what Europe thought of our country in 1776.”

Majewski made the comments after a mass shooting at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, a wealthy suburb of Chicago.

The shooting killed at least six people and left dozens wounded. Police have arrested a 22-year-old man from neighboring Highwood in connection with the shooting.

Majewski is running in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, a formerly safe Democratic seat President Joe Biden carried by a nearly 20-point margin in the 2020 presidential election that is newly competitive after redistricting carried out by the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission. The polling organization FiveThirtyEight now says the district has a 6-point Republican lean.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House, touts Majewski as one of its top House nominees in the 2022 midterms. Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Majewski.

Proclaiming that mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for the right to own guns in the United States is only the latest controversy Majewski has created during his run for office.

Majewski bragged about being at the U.S. Capitol during the deadly insurrection by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

He said he spent $20,000 to transport 30 “patriots” to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol in order to block certification of Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power.

Majewski is an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory that, as the polling organization Ipsos put it in a poll it carried out in December 2020, “A group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.” The FBI calls QAnon a domestic terror threat. Majewski wears clothing adorned with QAnon logos and uses QAnon phrases in social media posts.

Majewski rose to prominence after he painted a Trump 2020 sign on his front lawn.

He also posted a video of himself rapping a verse in a song called “Let’s Go Brandon,” threatening against people who try to make him wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“Let’s go Brandon” has developed into a euphemism that those on the right use for “Fuck Joe Biden.”

Majewski faces incumbent Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who has served in Congress since 1983.

The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.