GOP Missouri lawmaker ties shootings to abortion: ‘Life has no value to a lot of these folks’

Republican Rep. Billy Long (Mo.) argued this week that an increase in fatal shootings is tied to abortion, as both, in his view, are issues of not valuing life.

“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Mo., so something has happened to our society and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mother’s wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks,” Long said on Wednesday in an interview on 93.9 the Eagle’s “Wake Up Columbia.”

Long, who is currently running for the Senate, made the comment after multiple recent mass shootings, including the one at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers. 

In the interview, he said the approach to stop mass shootings begins at a community level and beefing up security at schools. 

“All this goes back to the school boards. I mean everyone has to police your own area, has to take care of your own kid, your own schools,” Long said. 

Long and other Republican lawmakers are pushing back on the idea that more gun control is needed in the U.S. after the shootings. 

“Unfortunately, they’re trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies,” Long said.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is coming together to discuss measures Congress can take to combat the mass shootings, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) saying he believes both sides are finally ready to tackle gun violence. 

“Today a group of eight bipartisan Senators met to continue negotiations on a gun violence bill that can get a broad, bipartisan vote in the Senate. This follows a similar meeting yesterday,” Murphy tweeted. “There is growing momentum to get something done and we agreed on a plan to keep working.”