December 5, 2021

Days After the Michigan School Shooting, a GOP Lawmaker Posted a Gun-Filled Family Photo

“Santa, please bring ammo.”

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) waves around a tiny handgun at a 2020 pro-gun rally.Bryan Woolston/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) posted a holiday-themed family photo to his Twitter account. The image featured a decorated Christmas tree, Massie’s smiling wife and kids, and seven guns that appear to be a mix of semi-automatic rifles and machine guns.

“Merry Christmas!” he wrote. “Santa, please bring ammo.”

Massie shared the photo less than a week after prosecutors charged 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley for allegedly killing four people and wounding seven at his high school in Oxford, Michigan—the deadliest such shooting in the US this year. That timing, mixed with the jarring visual, evoked a barrage of criticism from Massie’s fellow lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as from gun advocates. (Massie’s last brush with public condemnation came in August, when he wrote another tweet comparing vaccination mandates to the Holocaust.)

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” wrote Rep. John Yarmuth (D–Ky.), Massie’s House colleague from Kentucky, on Twitter. “Now they openly rub the murder of children in our faces like they scored a touchdown. Disgraceful.”

“I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole,” he added in another tweet.

Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger chimed in, tweeting that he supported the second amendment, “but this isn’t supporting [the] right to keep and bear arms, this is a gun fetish.”

In a CNN appearance on Saturday, Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed in the 2018 shooting at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, described Massie’s post as “very nasty,” calling it “something that should teach us who should we elect, and not.”

Fellow Parkland father Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter Jaime in the shooting, replied directly to Massie’s post.

“Since we are sharing family photos, here are mine,” he wrote above his last photo of his daughter and another of her grave.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate