Rep. Jamaal Bowman gets in heated exchange over gun control with Kentucky congressman
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A shouting match between two congressmen on Capitol Hill was caught on video in the wake of Monday's school shooting in Nashville, where three children and three adults were killed.
One of the congressmen was Rep. Jamaal Bowman, of New York's 16th District, whose passion about school shootings goes beyond politics.
"They're cowards. They're all cowards," Bowman shouted.
Bowman was vocal with his frustration towards Republicans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, his remarks eventually getting the attention of Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, a co-chair of the House Second Amendment Caucus, who suggested teachers should carry weapons as the exchange began to heat up.
"You know there's never been a school shooting at a school that allows teachers to carry," Massie said.
"I'm talking about gun violence," Bowman said. "Carry guns? You think more guns? More guns leads to more death."
Bowman and Massie's disagreement closely resembles the entrenched views on both sides of the aisle on the issue. Experts like Warren Eller, a professor at john jay's college of criminal justice, say legislation to keep our kids safe may require both sides to meet in the middle.
"We are a long way away from talking about this in a truly objective fashion, and for that reason, even if we were to have resolution, it still wouldn't be good resolution," he said. "You couldn't have a school shooting without a firearm. That goes without saying. It would be nice if we could wave a wand and immediately say all 300 million firearms in private hands in the United States are gone. But we can't do that."
President Joe Biden has called on Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban, but Eller says that won't solve everything and that the majority of shooters use pistols, which are cheaper and easier to use and conceal.
But Congressman Bowman's passion for a ban, after Nashville's shooting, especially, isn't just politics; it's personal.
"Calm down? Children are dying, 9-year-old children. The solution is not arming teachers. Have you ever worked in a school? Have you ever worked in a school?" Bowman asked Massie.
Because Bowman has. He was a teacher and educator before he ran for office, specifically working in crisis intervention at a high school in the South Bronx before founding nearby Cornerstone Academy for Social Action.
"I feared every day that a shooter would come into my school and try to kill me and my students," Bowman said.
Since the gun reform bill on background checks passed last June, the two sides haven't come close to agreeing on any further gun violence legislation, and in just that nine-month span, according to the gun violence archive, we've seen 491 mass shootings in this country.
