1 year ago
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On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley went on CNN to appear in another of the network’s now infamous “town halls.” The kind of town hall that promises the sort of kid glove treatment that can only be delivered by a network in free fall. It was the same town hall at which Haley spent a prolonged period beating up on trans kids as Jake Tapper teed up a series of softballs for Haley to bloop unchallenged into the ranks of a supportive audience, without even a hint of fact-checking.
Eventually Tapper asked how Haley would handle the wave of mass shootings in America—a wave that included five mass shootings on the very day Haley made her CNN appearance and 263 mass shootings of the first 150 days of the year. Naturally, Haley had a quick answer prepared to please the audience of Iowa Republicans and nothing but Republicans. Haley’s response was hideous.
“The reason a lot of these happen, and you mentioned shootings at schools,” said Haley, “you need to end gun-free zones. Gun-free zones! Killers always look for a place that’s a gun-free zone. Because guess what? Nobody else is going to be able to protect themself.”
The only answer that Republicans have to the issue of gun violence is more guns. More people carrying guns, and more people shooting guns. It’s an answer so unextraordinary that when The New York Times reported on Haley’s event, they didn’t even mention either the question or the answer.
