U.S. Representative Paul Gosar has joined the push to equip educators with concealed firearms. /Gage Skidmore
By ELIAS WEISS | Phoenix New Times
Arizona Republicans this week found a way to come together in the wake of an elementary school massacre on May 24 in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead.
Here’s the plan: Arm teachers and administrators to the teeth and prepare them to fire back at an active shooter. More, not fewer, guns is their solution.
At first, U.S. Representative Paul Gosar, misidentified the assassin as “a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos.” The since-deleted tweet on May 25 was part of a debunked conspiracy theory that the shooting was a government-orchestrated false-flag operation.
He’s since backpedaled from the bizarre claim that failed to stick among his GOP colleagues, and joined the push to equip educators with concealed firearms. The sixth-term congressman was mum on the inflammatory tweet in comments to Phoenix New Times but flipped the narrative on his colleagues across the aisle.
“Reflexively, moments after the shooting, the left blamed Republicans including me for the actions of this murderer,” Gosar told New Times in a letter on Sunday. “This absurd rhetoric is completely abhorrent, yet all too common from leftists quick to politicize tragedies.”
In House chambers, Gosar is surrounded at all times by an armed security detail. There are guarded points of entry. Armed security personnel and metal detectors safeguard the airports where he and his compatriots fly frequently between Phoenix Sky Harbor International and Washington Dulles International airports.
The same should be true in schools, he and his fellow Republicans agree.
