GOP House hopeful blamed atheism for Sandy Hook shooting

by Sarah Ferris - 09/25/14 12:29 PM ET

The Tea Party candidate trying to unseat Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.) once said that the Sandy Hook shooting was caused by the “atheist agenda that has permeated every corner of our society.”

Zach Dasher, a nephew of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, hosted a podcast called “Why Did This Happen” three days after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., claiming that the man behind the rampage had been influenced by atheism and postmodernity.

{mosads}“The reason why this happens is because we have denied as a culture that man is made in God’s image,” Dasher said. “We deny the very existence of God.”

He said the shooter, Adam Lanza, had been born as pure as the 26 people he killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School but was led astray by people who ignored God.

“He was made in the image of God. But somewhere along the way he believed what the atheist says,” he said in the podcast, which was first reported by BuzzFeed on Wednesday.

For the “millions of people across the world” who blamed gun control and mental illness for the shooting, Dasher said they were simply avoiding personal responsibility.

“To blame the acts of a mass murderer on mental illness, for one, is a slap in the face, I think, to reason,” Dasher said. “It’s the equivalent of blaming lung cancer on coughing.”

Instead, he pointed to postmodernism, which he said also created videogames and porn.

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Dasher, who earned an endorsement from the Tea Party of Louisiana this week, is running in the November all-party primary alongside seven other candidates and McAllister, who earned the moniker “kissing congressman” after he was caught kissing a woman who wasn’t his wife earlier this year.

Dasher released a radio ad this week touting his endorsement from his “Duck Dynasty” relatives, the Robertson clan, who backed McAllister in his special election last year.

Tags Duck Dynasty Louisiana Louisiana-5 Vance McAllister