U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz continues to raise “red flags” about liberals’ efforts to impose more gun control.
On Wednesday, the Fort Walton Beach Republican delivered an impassioned criticism of a Democratic bill that would create a national emergency alert system for active shooters.
Gaetz, however, warned it would do more harm than good.
The congressman argued that instead of honoring safe, responsible gun ownership, the Democrats want to “stigmatize and scare people about guns.”
Gaetz said firing off an active shooter alert in a crowded event could trigger “stampede, tragedy, hysteria, mistakes, perhaps more death.”
“This bill is like yelling ‘fire’ in a movie theater, except fire is in another theater across the street,” said Gaetz.
Gaetz criticized the bill for its lack of specificity on the most important elements.
He said it failed to adequately define a geographic area that would restrict the alert.
“Some of our cities have shootings every day, where multiple people are injured. And often this happens in the jurisdictions with the most intense and liberty-depriving gun control,” said Gaetz.
Gaetz’s point was made last week, at a Fourth of July show in Orlando.
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More than 100,000 people gathered around Lake Eola to watch the show. Just six minutes in, because of noise many thought was gunfire, “people started unexpectedly running, cowering, and jumping over bushes, which led to a chain-reaction of people yelling and running away from the parks and into the nearby streets,” Fox 35 reported on Monday.
It turned out there was no shooting.
Yet, “about a dozen people were injured as a result of the chaos, but injuries were determined to be minor,” the station reported.
Meanwhile, Gaetz also asked, “What is an active shooter?”
“A drive-by in an inner city? A spousal murder in the suburbs? If you live in or near Democrat-run cities, it sounds like your phone will likely be buzzing off the hook.”
As for the bill’s actual definition, according to Gaetz, an active shooter is a person “determined to pose an active, imminent threat to the people in a populated area.”
“That sounds like a sizable amount of the people walking around the south side of Chicago every day,” said Gaetz.
Gaetz also noted that by the time the alert is sent, it would be too late to do any good.
“This bill is useless and foolish,” he added. “Alerting thousands of people to what may or may not have happened 30 minutes ago or 30 blocks away is, in fact, dangerous.”
He then asked rhetorically: Why do Democrats want to “use the power of government to bombard your cellphone with active-shooter alerts 24 hours a day, seven days a week?”
“They want you to be afraid of the Second Amendment,” Gaetz said. “They want you to be afraid of responsible gun ownership.”
“They hope that if they program you, and bombard you long enough, that you’ll hate your own Second Amendment rights or that you may tattle on your neighbor who is lawfully and rightfully exercising theirs.”
“The American people should not fall for this.”
Yet many House Republicans did. The bill passed 260-169 with 43 Republicans joining the Democrats, according to The Hill. Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin sided with GOP lawmakers in dissent.
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