Clay Higgins Plants ‘Seeds of Violence’ at Hearing on Assault Weapons as Victims Tell Their Stories

Cajun John Wayne re-typed himself there on Wednesday, it’s just that now he’s not a cop has resigned from the Louisiana police department while facing disciplinary charges for lying about being rough with someone. there.

And Clay Higgins‘hard talk is no longer aimed at fugitive offenders, as when he made viral murder crime videos at the second of the two Louisiana police departments that later hired him.

Higgins turned to the attention he received from the videos when he was elected to represent the United States for Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District. He spoke as a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee during Wednesday’s hearing on assault weapons. He thinks Democrats are trying to circumvent the Second Amendment with an assault weapons ban, and he envisions loud gunfights between gun owners and federal agents.

In view of his former boss in the Opelousas Police Department, retired Sheriff Perry Gallow, what may have been just a stage play in Higgins’ previous life as a ravin cop’ Cajun constituted the perilous talk of a political leader in a critical time. And Higgins did just that in a hearing that included two witnesses who survived a mass shooting and three others who lost loved ones.

“In my opinion, the congressman should choose his words wisely, because his words are very important, and there are people who are outside and can retaliate based on their words. his and the words of anyone who might suggest it,” Gallow said.

The Democratic leadership used its own video at the start of the hearing with three brief statements from people directly affected by mass shootings carried out with assault weapons. It began with the massacre of 20 children and 4 adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

“Hi, my name is Nicole, and almost 10 years ago, I survived the Sandy Hook shooting in my elementary school, when I was 7 years old,” said the first witness to appear on screen. . “To this day, I still struggle with the terrible consequences.”

Nicole Melchionna is followed by David Sallak, who survived shooting at the 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, resulting in seven deaths. Two-year-old Aiden McCarthy was immediately orphaned. 8 years old Cooper Roberts is paralyzed.

“Our family was at the parade when I saw the shooter emerge from the roof of the second floor and point his long gun at my family and those around me and quickly open fire.” Sallak said. “I threw my wife and son behind a metal park bench to save our lives. After the shooting stopped, I saw Cooper Roberts’ father standing screaming for help, while my wife saw their son Cooper convulsing on the ground, shot through the stomach and spine.”

Then there was another Highland Park survivor, Ashbey Beasley.

“As we ran, holding hands, not knowing if someone was going to shoot us and whether we were going to live or die, my son lost a huge part of his innocence,” she said. “He is not the same person. He was devastated and every day my wife and I are heartbroken trying to help him get back to the sweet, carefree boy he was before this happened.”

Next was a teenager whose sister was one of 19 children murdered in Texas in May.

“Hi, I’m Jasmine Cazares. I’m 17 years old, and I lost my little sister, Jackie, at the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde. “

She held up a photo of Jacklyn Cazares in a white dress, posing with angel wings.

“This photo was taken during her first Communion on May 10,” says Jasmine Cazares. “Sixteen days later, she was shot dead [by] a Daniel Defense AR-15. “

Next is a Uvalde mother.

“My name is Ana Rodriguez. I lost my daughter, Maite Rodriguez, on May 24, 2022, at the Robb school shooting. Maite is a sweet 10-year-old girl who dreams of going to Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi to pursue a career in marine biology. Maite has been robbed of its future because of gun violence.”

Drew Angerer / Getty

There is also the father of 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, who died in a mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida.

“My name is Fred Guttenberg. I am the father of Jesse and Jaime Guttenberg. On February 14, 2018, I sent my two children to school safely. Later that day, a gunman showed up at my daughter’s school, killing 17. My daughter was one of 17 people killed.

There is also Tracey Maciulewicz, whose fiance, Andre Mackniel, was one of 10 people shot dead at Tops supermarket in Buffalo.

“My fiancé was shot to death on May 14th by a white supremacist man as he went into the Tops to buy our son a birthday cake. The shooter killed my fiance with a Bushmaster X 15″ rifle.

Maciulewicz held her 3-year-old son in her lap as she questioned two gun company CEOs by video, who agreed to testify remotely.

“What are you going to do…” she began to ask, trying to hold back her tears.

Her son hugged her tightly and said, “It’s okay.”

“….to make sure your product doesn’t fall into the hands of a white extremist mass shooter who will take away a child’s father?”

The answer from the CEOs, Marty Daniel of Daniel Defense and Christopher Killoy of Sturm, Ruger & Company, is that they will essentially do nothing but market and sell more offensive weapons. Daniel seemed comfortable with himself even though he had just heard from a mother that her daughter had been killed by a rifle he manufactured and bore his name.

Committee members asked questions and provided opinions consistent with their stated views on offensive weapons. Congressman Andrew Clyde (R-GA) owns a gun shop called Clyde Armory in Athens, and he gets along with the executives.

But that wasn’t enough for the Higgins of Louisiana. Cajun John Wayne predicts widespread bloodshed between gun owners and law enforcement if supporters of legislation banning the sale of assault weapons manage to get it through the House. That’s not a sure thing, and there seems little chance of it getting through the Senate. But the mere prospect of it becoming Higgins’ profit-setting law.

“What my colleagues are doing, it is really, unbelievable beyond the pale of anything reasonable or constitutional. Everything we’re aiming for here is to seize firearms from the law-abiding families of American citizens who legally purchased those weapons. You are staging gunfights in American homes. “He continued:

“When do you think the ATF and the FBI will come to our house? Deadly nightshade. You are staging gunfights between American citizens protecting their homes from the dark, armed with obvious weapons, entering our homes, entering our porches, and through our doors. . You are arranging death.

He offers an immediate future as “Americans kill Americans for something imaginary that you can determine what dangerous weapons are in the hands of those Americans, living out of their real right to decide for themselves what weapons they legally purchase and possess. This is crazy. What you are promoting, it will not end well. You can pass this bill by a partisan vote, but Americans will not sit and allow it to go unanswered.”

Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters

He snapped his fingers as he continued.

“People make decisions like that. Again, in the dead of night. “

He is speaking as if he were the voice of experience.

“You are setting up some extreme stuff and you are 100% responsible for it. My colleagues in the Democratic Party, when those gunfights happen, that blood will be on your hands.”

He called the proposed ban a “political game of pretending to be able to identify the weapon you have from your ivory tower in DC that you know better. ‘I can identify weapons that Americans should not have the right to own.’ It’s already, we can’t buy a tank or caliber over 50. We carry light weapons and we own them. We own them legally. We plan to keep them.”

He said the committee was headed for “a rabbit hole from which to escape.”

“It finally ends with an American citizen standing up for this freedom… Will it be argued in court or will it be settled on the doorstep of Americans when the FBI and ATF show up to collect keep a legally owned firearm from a law-abiding US citizen? “

For part of his time with the police Opelousas, Higgins was on the SWAT team and executed a search warrant. His career there ended after a drug raid where he allegedly grabbed a bystander by the hair and beat him. He didn’t help me with what was seen as an attempt to cover up

“Clay Higgins used unnecessary force against a subject while executing an order and subsequently gave false statements during an internal investigation. Though he later recounted his story and admitted to handcuffing a suspect and then releasing him,” said the Department’s Disciplinary Review Board.

Higgins did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment. But in the later version he give to the local presshe was ejected from the department after he was overheard calling Sheriff Gallow a “peacock”.

“There’s so much more to it,” Gallow told The Daily Beast on Wednesday afternoon.

When informed of Higgins’ dramatic talk about widespread bloodshed because of the assault weapons ban, Gallow initially assumed that Higgins was simply dramatic for effect.

“As he usually does,” Gallow said. “I know there’s a stage in politics right now, and he does it well.”

But shortly after speaking to The Daily Beast, Gallow called back. He had read online an account of Higgins being challenged outside the hearing room by Highland Park survivor Beasley.

As CNN reported, Beasley told Higgins he was wrong to think that Democrats on the committee were only out to grab guns from law-abiding Americans.

“If you don’t think these guys are in this body…if you don’t think they’re going to go door to door to get your weapon, you’re wrong,” Higgins told her.

“Have you ever run away from a mass shooter because you were being shot at?” Beasley asked.

According to the report, Higgins told her he had been a SWAT officer for 12 years, which Gallow deemed an exaggeration.

“So you don’t know how it feels?” Beasley asked.

Higgins didn’t answer, perhaps because of the fact he didn’t know how to feel. Gallow said that to the best of his knowledge, Higgins was never involved in a shooting. Gallow was concerned that Higgins’ language might lead to one.

“I think that is irresponsible,” Gallow said. “And it’s discouraging for our leaders to sow the seeds of violence.”