Sandy Hook parents angered over Congress member’s post about shooting
WASHINGTON — A new Republican congresswoman agreed in 2018 that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged, according to Facebook posts that surfaced this week, drawing condemnation from Connecticut lawmakers and calls for her resignation from some gun-reform groups.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote in 2018 “that is all true” on a Facebook post that claimed the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings were “stagged [sic],” along with the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The post was surfaced by Media Matters this week.
In response, Nicole Hockley, another leader of the non-profit Sandy Hook Promise and mother of six-year-old Dylan who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, invited Greene to Newtown to see her son’s ashes and his “bullet-hole riddled sweatshirt.”
Asked if Greene still believes the school shootings were staged, her spokesman Nick Dyer said simply “no” and referred the reporter to a Twitter statement from Greene, in which she referred to the 2018 Parkland shooting at Marjoriy Stoneman Douglas High School as “tragic” and said the students who died should have been protected by “good guys with guns.” Greene is also Congress’s most prominent QAnon supporter.
The false, extremist theory that the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 children, was a hoax, has plagued Newtown families for years, promoted by Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others. Now even Jones doesn’t believe it was staged, like he did in 2014, according to court documents. But other extremists continue to hound and harass Sandy
Hook families over the falsehood.
In 2018, Greene suggested on Facebook that Democrats cooked up school shootings to limit gun access. She wrote “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.” Now, a first-term Congresswoman, Greene has said she intends to be the strongest defender of gun rights on Capitol Hill and has signed onto to legislation to expand access to suppressors and ease transfers of firearm accessories.
Newtown families called out Greene’s 2018 comments on Friday.
“This kind of dangerous and irresponsible thinking is disgusting and appalling, and it is even more reprehensible when it comes from an elected official who’s focus should be on keeping children safe,” said Mark Barden, managing director of the non-profit Sandy Hook Promise, who lost his son Daniel in the shooting.
Advocacy groups like March for Our Lives-Parkland, Moms Demand Action, and Everytown
for Gun Safety, have called for Greene to resign from Congress.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who represented Newtown in the U.S. House of Representatives at the time of the shooting, said Friday Greene’s past remark was “fringe,” “hateful” and “dangerous.”
“I fear there is going to be a cadre of House Republicans who are going to trade in these fringe theories to try to get attention,” he said. “I think we need to condemn folks who say things like that but at the same time, we don’t need to elevate what they’re saying as a means to give it more attention.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Greene’s “falsely bizarre” remarks exacerbate the harassment of Sandy Hook victims.
Murphy and Blumenthal have led the effort to stronger national gun laws, including bolstering the federal background check system for gun sales and implementing a national red flag law, respectively.