Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday the NRA has gone too far with the rhetoric it has used against proponents of gun control that the group believes is peddling lies about law-abiding gun owners and the Second Amendment.
“The kinds of rhetoric that are used actually I think have been encouraged by the Trump White House in its vehemence on this topic,” Mr. Blumenthal said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Now the NRA goes way beyond in terms of what the president did during the campaign in terms of inciting this kind of violence, but it reflects the demeaning and diminishing of our civility.”
Mr. Blumenthal was responding to a recent ad teasing NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch’s new upcoming show in which she takes aim at the group’s most vocal critics, including the “lying’ members of the media, athletes and politicians.
“We’ve had enough of the lies, the sanctimony, the arrogance, the hatred, the pettiness, the fake news, we are done with your agenda to undermine voters will and individual liberty in America,” Ms. Loesch says in the spot.
“Your time is running out,” she says, before turning over an hourglass. “The clock starts now.”
On Thursday, Mr. Blumenthal said the language “verges on illegal.”
“Whether it goes over the line or not, we can debate,” he said. “The main point is that it incites and encourages the kind of violence we have seen by its followers.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.