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US politician Thomas Massie (bottom left) with a gun in hand, posted on Massie's Twitter profile
Photo: @RepThomasMassie / Twitter
Republican US Congressman Thomas Massie has published a picture showing him and, it seems, his family sitting in front of a Christmas tree holding guns in their hands.
Massie posted the picture on his Twitter profile on Saturday.
To this he wrote: “Merry Christmas!
ps: Santa Claus, please bring us ammunition «.
The picture caused outrage mainly because a 15-year-old had shot dead four people in a high school near Detroit on Tuesday. As it turned out later, the father had bought the gun for his son. The parents have since been arrested. Massie does not refer directly to the act in his posting. The mother is said to have described the semi-automatic pistol on online platforms as a "Christmas present" for her son, as the Oakland County attorney said. This is one of the reasons why it stands to reason that Massie posted the picture with reference to the discussion about gun bans, which is now flaring up again in the USA.
Thomas Massie represents the state of Kentucky in the US House of Representatives. In the picture, Massie himself is holding a gun that looks like an M60 machine gun. Such fully automatic weapons are only allowed in the US for the military, police and civilians who have a special license for them. However, there are rifles that are designed to look like a fully automatic machine gun, even though it is only a semi-automatic one.
Democratic MP John Yarmuth, who also represents Kentucky in the House of Representatives, condemned the photo.
He wrote on Twitter: "I promise, not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole."
He continued, “I am old enough to remember Republicans shouting that trying to protect people from gun violence after such a tragedy was insensitive.
Now they're openly rubbing the murder of children under our noses, as if they'd scored a touchdown.
A shame."
xvc / Reuters