Whoopi Goldberg has called out Republican senators in the United States who have made hollow remarks in response to the latest school mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
On Wednesday, a day after 19 children and 2 adults were shot and killed by 18-year old Salvador Ramos, Goldberg and her fellow cohosts of The View discussed the tragedy.
“Why are we always at square one with this?” Goldberg said. “And I swear to God, if I see another Republican senator talk about their heart being broken, I’m going to go punch somebody. I can’t take any thoughts and prayers.”
“If your thoughts and prayers were really with everybody, you’d have done something by now,” the 66-year old continued. “It’s not like anybody’s not trying to make this happen. What the hell is going on?”
Goldberg’s co-host Joy Behar implored Republicans to “stop gaslighting” the public about the cause of the shootings.
“Stop saying ‘it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people,” she said. “It’s guns that kill people, OK? Stop saying the opposite. Stop saying that mental illness is behind this.”
“There’s mental illness in every country in the world, and they don’t have this problem. So stop gaslighting me on that one, and stop saying that you can have a good guy stop a bad guy with a gun.”
Another co-host, Sara Haines, addressed the disturbing ease with which one is able to obtain a gun in Texas.
“In Texas, you need zero [license] to go get a gun or carry a weapon,” she said. “Why do we not do that with an actual deadly weapon? They say, ‘guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’ I can concede that and I agree.”
“We need to fight for these red flag laws because every one of the shooters in the deadliest mass shootings in the past decade was flagged.”
“One of them had been visited 39 times by law enforcement, though because we don’t have a systematic check, these weren’t reported to the right people. Every one of them had a history that raised flags and signals, and they got away with it.”
“We have to fight for red flag laws in every state because right now the people that protect guns are protecting it can limit. Can’t we all agree that people that have a problem and can threaten people should not have a weapon for a period of time?”
Goldberg interjected, saying, “I want to thank Governor Abbott because he signed 22 bills this year making it easier for mass shooters to buy, carry, and own guns in his state.”
“Let’s apply his abortion laws to guns by deputising citizens to sue anyone involved in gun violence. So you sold an AR-15 at the gun show? See you in court. Does your neighbour have too big an arsenal? Call the cops.”
“Actually, let’s invoke some Supreme Court logic too. [Samuel] Alito says abortion’s not in the constitution. Neither are AR-15s,” she said, referring to the conservative Justice of the Supreme Court, who called Roe v Wade “egregiously wrong” in a draft opinion in February, adding that there was “no constitutional right to seek an abortion” at any stage in any pregnancy or for any reason he would acknowledge.
“So I guess the Constitution doesn’t cover them either,” Goldberg said. “Life is so sacred, then stop using guns to abort young lives. Stop using guns.”
Since the tragedy on Tuesday, many public figures have spoken out against the incident.
On Tuesday night, Golden State Warriors’ coach Steve Kerr told reporters at a pre-game news conference he was “tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there.”
“When are we going to do something?” Kerr said, displaying his anger. “I am so tired of the, excuse, I am sorry, I am tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”
Kerr is a life-long advocate of gun law reform, speaking out on numerous occasions about the H.R.8 bill that would tighten background check rules for the transfer of firearms among private parties.
The bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives early last year, though failed to arrive at the Senate floor.
“There’s a reason why they won’t vote on it,” Kerr said. “To hold on to power.”
He addressed the camera directly, saying, “I ask you: [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings.”
“I ask you: Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers? Because that’s what it looks like. It’s what we do every week.”
“I’m fed up. I’ve had enough,” he concluded. “We can’t get numb to this. We can’t sit here and just read about it and go, well, let’s go have a moment of silence.”
“It’s pathetic. I’ve had enough.”
On Wednesday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke publicly confronted Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott during a press conference, where he is heard shouting, “You are doing nothing. You are all doing nothing.”
“This is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything,” O’Rourke said, in a video of the press briefing.
One speaker who appears off-camera responded to O’Rourke, saying, “I can’t believe you sick son of a bitch would come to a deal like this to make a political issue.”
As O’Rourke was accompanied out of the conference by security guards, he turned around and shouted, “This is on you.”
In June last year, Abbott signed the permitless carry bill that eliminates the requirement for Texas residents to obtain a license to carry handguns, making it easier to carry a handgun in public.
O’Rourke later tweeted: “Governor Abbott, if you have any decency, you will immediately withdraw from this weekend’s NRA convention and urge them to hold it anywhere but Texas.”