Right-wing media are attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for showing her support for Democratic legislators who were expelled from the Tennessee state House, following protests over gun violence in the wake of the March 27 mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.
In the telling of right-wing media outlets, many of which have celebrated the expulsion of the Democratic legislators, Harris’ visit and support for people who called for policy solutions to reduce gun violence somehow demonstrated an insensitivity and lack of concern for the shooting victims and their families.
In fact, Harris specifically addressed the victims of mass shootings and the effect that the threat of rampant gun violence is having on a generation of children.
“Let’s understand the underlying issue is about fighting for the safety of our children,” Harris said in her speech Friday at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville. “It’s been years now where they are taught to read and write and hide in a closet and be quiet if there’s a mass shooter at their school, where our children, who have God’s capacity to learn and lead, who go to school in fear.”
Harris also used her speech to call for a number of specific and broadly popular policies advocated by the Biden administration that could begin to reduce gun violence, including background checks, red flag laws, and restrictions on the sale of assault-style weapons, while reiterating: “Let’s not fall for the false choice — either you’re in favor of the Second Amendment or you want reasonable gun safety laws.”
“We can and should do both,” the vice president said.
Right-wing commentators immediately pounced on Harris’ speech, seeming to manufacture a controversy out of thin air by attempting to pit the vice president against the victims and their families and telling their audiences that Harris simply visited Nashville as a political stunt to boost embattled Democratic lawmakers.