New House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News' Sean Hannity in his first interview as speaker that now is not the time to discuss legislation to address the scourge of mass shootings, adding: "The problem is the human heart, not guns."
This is a common refrain.
Here’s what Esau McCaulley wrote last year:
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, began his news conference on the day of the Uvalde massacre not with policy but theology. He said, “Evil swept across Uvalde today. Anyone who shoots his grandmother in the face must have evil in his heart, but it is far more evil for someone to gun down little kids.”
Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, addressed a conference in Houston, Texas, three days later and articulated a similar idea. The problem, he maintained, was not guns but the heart. He said, “If we as a nation were capable of legislating evil out of the hearts and minds of criminals who commit these heinous acts we would have done so a long time ago.”
The language of evil and hearts often rises to the fore in the context of mass shootings. The Buffalo shooting suspect was called “pure evil.” Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who attacked Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, was deemed “evil” by one of the survivors of the attack, while the prosecutor in the case against Mr. Roof said he had “a cold and hateful heart.”
And Glenn Thrush, also after Uvalde:
One by one, they then rejected any suggestion that gun control measures were needed to stop mass shootings. They blamed the atrocities on factors that had nothing to do with firearms — the breakdown of the American family, untreated mental illness, bullying on social media, violent video games and the inexplicable existence of “evil.”
Evil exists. And evil is surely a factor in gun massacres. I wouldn’t deny it.
But also: I don’t believe Mike Johnson when he waves away the possibility of doing something about gun massacres because really it’s a problem of evil.
Why?
Because there are lots of things that Mike Johnson thinks is evil. And he really wants to do something about those things!
Washington — In an op-ed he wrote in 2005, newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson called abortion "a holocaust" and linked the judicial philosophy that legalized the right to an abortion to Hitler.
At the time, Johnson was a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and seeks to overturn pro-LGBTQ laws. The group, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing the medical associations and doctors challenging the abortion pill mifepristone's availability nationwide.
In 2022, Johnson introduced federal legislation banning the use of federal funds "to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10."
Sexually-oriented was defined by the bill as "any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects," CNBC noted.
In the early 2000s, Johnson worked as an attorney and spokesperson for the evangelical Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom. For decades, ADF — designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation the Arizona-based group disputes — spearheaded legal efforts to criminalize same-sex sexual activity, block efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, allow for businesses to deny service to LGBTQ people, and ban transgender people from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identities.
During his ADF tenure, Johnson sued the city of New Orleans in 2003 on behalf of the group over a local law that gave health care benefits to the partners of gay city workers.
Just so we’re clear:
Mike Johnson thinks that gay people getting health benefits under their partner’s workplace insurance plans is a wrong in need of correction.
Gun massacres? Not so much.
There is some truth to the statement that the problem is with the human heart. I’m will to start from there, because it’s the basis for red flag laws. No one with a history that hints at domestic violence or animal cruelty should be allowed to own a firearm. There’s a lot more I’d like to do address gun violence, but give me that one and we will have made some progress. But usually when red flag laws are brought up, Republicans jump to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of accused wife beaters and dog torturers.