Actor Ben Stiller responded to Congressman Tim Burchett’s denial that anything could be done about mass shootings with three words and a hashtag.
“No, you can #BanAssaultWeaponsNow,” Stiller wrote on Twitter in a retweet of the video of the politician, which has received a lot of other similar replies and engagement.
The Republican representative for Knoxville and surrounding communities in Tennessee didn’t have much to say when asked about the latest mass shooting, which occurred in Nashville on Monday morning.
“Three precious little kids lost their lives and I believe three adults and the shooter, of course, too lost their life. It’s a horrible, horrible situation and we’re not going to fix it,” Burchett said in a video tweeted by journalist Brennan Murphy. “Criminals are going to be criminals and my daddy fought the second world war in the Pacific, he foutht the Japanese and he told me he said, ‘Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”
Murphy tweeted more videos of the reporter questioning Burchett.
“I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up honestly because of the situation,” Burchett said. “Like I said, I don’t think a criminal is going to stop from guns, you can print them out on the computer now. I don’t think we’re going to stop gun violence. I think we’ve got to change people’s hearts.”
When asked about his own daughter and what should be done to protect her, Burchett responded that they homeschool her.
“That’s our decision. Some people don’t have that option, and frankly some people don’t need to do it,” he said. “They don’t have to. It just suited our needs much better.”
