GOP Louie Gohmert on Wednesday blamed the lack of prayer, not guns, for the killing of 9 children and two teachers in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.
Speaking during the House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday on gun violence, Gohmert complained that Democrats “sure don’t want to hear any more about prayers” as a solution to the issue.
“They’re disgusted hearing about prayers,” the Texas Republican said.
“Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God’s name in vain, we wouldn’t have the mass killings like we didn’t have before prayer was eliminated from school,” he added.
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Gohmert is among several Republicans blaming the lack of prayers for the mass shootings.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) used a similar line of reasoning in a news conference, arguing that “we had AR-15s in the 1960s. We didn’t have those mass school shootings.”
“We actually had prayer in school during those days,” he said, according to HuffPost.
Also during Wednesday’s hearing, Texas Rep. Pat Fallon (R) blamed the “erosion of faith” for the carnage, argueing that guns had always been readily available in the U.S. but mass shootings were a more recent phenomenon.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) argued last month that “we don’t need more gun control. We need to return to God.” And Oklahoma GOP Senate candidate Jackson Lahmeyer said after the Uvalde shooting it was time to arm teachers and “bring back prayer in our public schools.”
RELATED: Husband Of Slain Uvalde Teacher Dies ‘Due To Grief’ After Losing His Wife In School Massacre.
As noted by HuffPost however, “other Western countries have become increasingly secular without seeing increasing gun violence. In Australia, for example, there hasn’t been a comparable mass shooting since 1996, when a massacre prompted mandatory gun buybacks to remove semi-automatic firearms from civilian possession.”
Watch Gohmer’s speech below:
Gohmert: Maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders in this country instead of taking god’s name in vain, we wouldn’t have the mass killings like we didn’t have before prayer was eliminated from schools pic.twitter.com/vq1BQFzPkA
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 8, 2022
