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Throwback Photo of Gov. Abbott Smiling While Holding Massive Gun Sets Twitter OFF

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We need to set out a couple of important facts for context.

Most importantly, the picture was taken prior to yesterday’s mass shooting in Texas, though – we should note, that Texas had had plenty of mass shootings prior to yesterday and the U.S. has had perhaps thousands. Normal people realize that guns are a huge problem and don’t want to sit with one smiling for a picture. Of course, every Republican does.

Additionally, every Republican believes the bigger the gun, the better. So Abbot is holding a monstrously big gun, one probably developed for military use but possibly available in Texas (Can we rule anything out?) He is not, however, holding an assault rifle. Abbott is holding a sniper rifle with a silencer. The silencer is illegal nearly everywhere. A sniper rifle like the one Abbot is holding could be extremely dangerous, especially with a silencer, if someone sat in a tall building and started shooting people below 500 yards away. But it is very hard to haul around a gun that big and not attract attention prior to shooting, it is also hard to load and reload. Abbott is holding a huge and dangerous gun but not the type causing all these mass shootings.

Yes, we are placing this image in every story about Uvalde. We want you to see their faces. God, they mattered.

But it doesn’t change the dynamic that Republicans worship guns to the point that a picture with one is an entry-level requirement for anyone seeking office and the bigger the better. It is yet another example of the sickness that permeates the American Right.

And, of course, Twitter went off about how ubiquitous these pictures are as a Republican campaign picture:

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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman

Jason Miciak
meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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