A Republican senator has blamed ‘wokeness’ for school shootings in the US, days after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Speaking in a new interview, senator Ron Johnson said stronger background checks alone won’t prevent shootings.
He suggested ‘stronger families’ and ‘renewed faith’ could curb future shootings and said that ‘teaching wokeness’ is ‘indoctrinating our children’ and ‘telling them they’re the cause of other people’s problems’.
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Speaking to Fox Business host Neil Cavuto, Johnson said: “This is a society-wide problem, a society-wide sickness that is not going to be solved by some gun law,” according to Kenosha News.
Asked about the implementation of stricter background checks, Johnson continued: “The solution lies in stronger families, more supportive communities, I would argue renewed faith.
“We’ve lost that. We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching 'wokeness'. We’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling, you know, some children they’re not equal to others and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”
CRT, or critical race theory, was developed in the 1970s and 80s by Harvard law professors and is a framework through which academics can analyse the ways our current laws reproduce racial disparities.
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Republicans have been critical of CRT and have tried to ban conversations about race and sex oppression from American classrooms.
During the interview, Cavuto noted that school shootings occurred before concepts of ‘wokeness’ and CRT became focal talking points, prompting a push back from Johnson.
Johnson said: “I think CRT has been going on under the radar for quite some time as well. Wokeness has been, liberal indoctrination has been.
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“This is a much larger issue than what a simple new gun law’s going to – it’s not going to solve it, it’s not going to solve it.”
UNILAD has approached Johnson’s office for comment.
Johnson’s comments come five days after Ramos stormed an elementary school in Texas and killed 19 children and two adults.
The teen was armed with a handgun, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines, officials said.
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In the wake of the devastating incident, US President Joe Biden has urged Americans to stand up to the gun lobby.
“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?" Biden said.
“It is time to turn this pain to the action, for every parent, every citizen of this country. We have to make it clear to every elected official in this country: it’s time to act. It’s time for those who obstruct or delay or blocked the common sense gun laws – we need to let you know that we will not forget.”
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Aisha Nozari