Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., is backing a bill to make the AR-15 rifle — a gun that has been used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in the country — the "National Gun of the United States."
Santos this week joined primary sponsor Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., in backing the bill, as did gun store owner Rep. Andrew Clyde, R- Ga., and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who ran a gun-themed restaurant called "Shooters Grill."
Moore announced the bill this week claiming, "any government that would take away one right would take away them all," AL.com first reported.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, rebuked Santos, and called his support of the bill "outrageous and appalling."
"This bill, which attempts to glorify the weapons that have been part of such horrific tragedies, adds unforgivable insult to injury for those families," Hochul said in a statement to Gothamist.
Santos, who has experienced several media blunders recently after lying about his background, appears to be moving to the far right of the Republican Party. He has aligned himself with several gun rights supporters who have opposed background checks despite the fact that the majority of Americans, and gun owners at large, are in favor of them. Earlier this month he was spotted wearing a pin depicting the weapon while in Congress.
The proposed legislation states the "AR-15 style rifle chambered in a .223 Remington round or a 5.56x45mm NATO round [would be] the National Gun of the United States." No other details were made available.
Some of the most devastating mass shootings of the past decade have been carried out using AR-15-style rifles. Gunmen at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo all carried out their massacres with similar rifles.
"I think that is disgusting, that a New York state congressman who's done nothing else of consequence would put his name on a bill to make the AR-15, a weapon of mass destruction that's slaughtered people's lives from my hometown of Buffalo last May all the way to the Parkland shooting," Hochul added in an interview with CBS2.
Data shows that an AR-15-style rifle was used to kill at least 226 people in mass shootings since 2012.
"It is shocking at every level," Hochul told the outlet. "We are calling on him to remove his name from that heinous bill and to encourage other members of Congress who are walking around sporting emblems of a gun on their lapels to stop spitting in the faces of the victims of these crimes."
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Linda Beigel Schulman, whose son was killed in the Parkland school shooting, keeps an image of her son's last moments caught on school cameras that day on display in her Long Island office.
She shared the image with CBS2, saying: "You need to not turn away, it needs to be upsetting and you need to understand what's going on so we can stop it."
Her son, Scott Beigel, was a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, and one of 17 people killed in the mass shooting.
"That AR-15 that they want to make a national gun murdered my son," she said. "This is the last second before the AR-15 was fired, and Scott was still standing in the doorway trying to close his classroom door."
When Schulman found out Santos was supporting the bill, she thought it was a joke.
"The man is literally a psychopath," she told the outlet. "We need gun safety. We don't need to put a prize on something that kills people."
"It's not just the people who were murdered that are the victims; it's the families, it's the friends of the families, it's the people who support the families," she continued. "We all need to shout a little louder and make sure that we kill this bill so that that AR-15 doesn't continue to kill our loved ones."
After several requests from WABC reporter Chantee Lans, Santos finally explained on Thursday why he is backing the controversial bill.
He told the outlet that his support for the legislation "shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody," because he ran on a gun rights platform.
"I've always been very clear I'm very pro-Second Amendment," he said. "At the same time, I'm very conscious about a mental-health crisis that we have in this country and also an accountability crisis that we have in this country. It's a resolution, it's more about recognition.
"It's a made-in-America gun," he continued, defending his sponsorship of the bill. "We have national everything, but why not have a national gun?" he asked.
His comments come just days after the white supremacist convicted of killing 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket with the semiautomatic rifle was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Santos has signed several seemingly random pieces of legislation since getting sworn in in January, including a bill encouraging colleges to ban TikTok, and one requiring that the U.S. Treasury mint coins commemorating service dogs.
The bill is highly unlikely to pass considering Democrats have control of the Senate and White House.
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