Congressional Gun Nut Lauren Boebert Sent a Progun Fundraising Email Hours After Colorado Shooting

In her short time in politics, freshman representative Lauren Boebert has made it abundantly clear that she’s a proud gun nut. The owner of a Colorado restaurant called Shooters Grill, where the staff is encouraged to carry firearms on the job, Boebert organized a 2019 rally opposing a law that allows guns to be taken from people deemed a threat; vowed to carry a gun while working on Capitol Hill; and refused to have her bag checked after setting off newly installed metal detectors following the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But just in case anyone missed the numerous memos re: how she feels about deadly weapons, Boebert made her stance plain on Monday, when she blasted supporters with a progun email shortly after the Colorado shooting that left 10 people dead.

Just two hours after a gunman murdered almost a dozen people at a Boulder grocery store, Boebert’s campaign sent out a fundraising message with the subject line: “I told Beto ‘HELL NO’ to taking our guns. Now we need to tell Joe Biden.” Paid for by Lauren Boebert for Congress, it read:

Radical liberals in Washington, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and with President Biden’s blessing and support are trying to violate your due process and criminalize the private transfer of firearms. 

This effort can only end with one thing: turning law abiding citizens into criminals. That’s what they want. Do you thing [sic] the gang members, drug runners, and thugs will obey their laws? Of course not. This is about punishing conservatives who want to keep the right to defend their family and their livelihood. 

I told Beto “Hell No” when he tried to take my guns. Now I am in Congress to tell Joe Biden the same. Will you please help me send them a message by pitching in $10 right now? 

They want to defund our police. Then they want to take our guns. What do we think comes next? We cannot lose this right. Please help me stand up to the radical gun-grabbing left. 

Not surprisingly, Boebert received significant backlash for the email. “What she’s really saying is she’ll defend your second amendment right to murder 10 innocent bystanders at a time. And she’s not ashamed to use it as fundraising tool,” one critic wrote on Twitter. It’s unclear if the Colorado representative’s campaign had prescheduled the email before the news of the mass shooting hit, though it would have been pretty easy to reschedule it for a slightly more appropriate time. (Like, say, never.) Even before trying to raise money off the backs of 10 dead people, Boebert had come under fire for criticizing Biden on immigration after the Colorado tragedy had already made the news. “People were killed by an active shooting in YOUR state while you were thinking up this rubbish,” tweeted one user. “At least PRETEND to be a decent human being who cares about her constituents instead of just getting some cheap attention.” After someone apparently informed her how bad all this looked, Boebert tweeted a statement that read, “My prayers are with the shoppers, employees, first responders & others affected by the shooting in Boulder.”

Of course, the freshman representative, who proudly displays her gun collection during congressional meetings, wasn’t the only one whose priorities were made abundantly clear in the midst of the horrific event in Boulder.

Meanwhile, Senator Tom Cotton on Tuesday used a hearing about gun violence to blame the “defund the police” movement for an increase in crime:

Cotton, naturally, has received an A rating from the NRA, which endorsed him during his 2014 run for Senate. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, he said he didn’t think any newly proposed gun control legislation would have stopped the mass shooting from taking place, because of course he did.