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Republican slammed for gun touting Christmas card just days after a school shooting

Republican slammed for gun touting Christmas card just days after a school shooting

Republican congressman Thomas Massie has been met with widespread outrage after posting a bizarre Christmas card that sees he and his family posing with guns - just days after a school shooting killed four students in Michigan.

Posting his family photo to Twitter, Massie wrote: “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo,” as he smiles alongside six of his family members.

Each of them holding guns resembling an M60 machine gun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Thompson submachine gun in front of a Christmas tree (because nothing says Christmas like modelling a deadly weapon).

Massie shared this photo just days after four students were shot dead - Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 - by suspected teenage gunman Ethan Crumbley when he opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan.

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Crumbley will be tried as an adult and has been charged with 24 felonies including four counts of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, have pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Massie was instantly confronted with outrage online over his holiday photo which one person described as “monstrous”.

John Yarmuth, a Democrat congressman who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee, slammed the photo posted by his fellow Kentuckian.

“I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a**hole,” he tweeted before adding in a follow-up post:

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy. Now they openly rub the murder of children in our faces like they scored a touchdown. Disgraceful.”

Fred Guttenberg, a father whose daughter Jaime Guttenberg was tragically killed in the Parkland school shooting in 2018 highlighted how a photo like Massie’s is harmful.

“The Michigan school shooter and his family used to take photos like yours as well,” he added in his tweet.

Elsewhere, people were also noting how if this photo had not have been a white family, then they would have been described as “terrorists,” leaving some to wonder what the reaction would have been if another congressperson such as Democrat Ilhan Omar has posted a photo of her family holding guns.

While others pointed out that the Christmas card looked like something out of the dystopian horror film The Purge and also argued that it’s not in line with the Christmas spirit since it’s hard to imagine that Jesus would’ve been the gun-touting type.

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