Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana was apparently gobsmacked at a comment a witness made during a Tuesday hearing.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “The Gun Violence Epidemic: A Public Health Crisis,” during which Kennedy pressed Dr. Franklin N. Cosey-Gay and other witnesses who called for more gun control legislation testified.
The Biden administration created a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in September, as it has called for renewing a ban on certain semi-automatic firearms in the wake of mass shootings in a Nashville school, a bank in Louisville, an outlet mall in Allen, Texas and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine earlier this year.
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“You said no one should be judged by the worst thing they have done in their lives,” Kennedy said to Cosey-Gay, “If one of these young doctors sitting behind you, god forbid, walks out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and is raped or sodomized, you don‘t think the rapist should be judged?”
“I don‘t think it should be terminal, it shouldn’t be for the rest of their lives,” Cosey-Gay responded.
Kennedy previously pressed another witness, Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, over failures to enforce laws currently on the books, pointing to Philadelphia District Attorney Len Krasner’s refusal to prosecute 47% of illegal gun possession cases.
“You think we should forgive them and not give them any punishment?” Kennedy asked. “You think nobody is responsible for their actions?”
“I believe in responsibility, but I believe in forgiveness,” Cosey-Gay said.
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Kennedy started to thank Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, before he reacted to Cosey-Gay’s response.
“Wow,” Kennedy responded.
Cosey-Gay, the Director of Violence Recovery Program at University of Chicago Medicine’s Urban Health Initiative since November 2021, according to the University of Chicago website, called for so-called “hospital-based violence intervention programs” in his written testimony.
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