U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who represents Livingston County, and Meghan Reckling, former chair of the Livingston County Republican Party, called out the Michigan GOP for its Tweet today that likened the current Democrat-backed gun proposals in the Michigan legislature to the Holocaust.
Here’s the tweet that stirred up the hornet’s nest:
#History has shown us that the first thing a government does when it wants total control over its people is to disarm them. President Reagan once stated, “if we lose #freedom here, there is nowhere else to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.” #2A #GOP pic.twitter.com/cGCHMN1Pxg
— Michigan GOP (@MIGOP) March 22, 2023
Keep in mind that the bills currently in the Legislature call for universal background checks, safe storage laws, and extreme risk protection (or red flag) laws; they do not take away guns, though the GOP is portraying any kind of gun safety legislation as a precursor to gun confiscation.
The package of bills currently before the Legislature comes three years after a group of armed protesters entered Michigan’s capitol; 16 month after 4 students were shot dead at Oxford High School; and a month after 3 students were shot to death at Michigan State University, and 5 were wounded, including Hartland High School graduate Nate Statly, who remains in critical condition at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing.
While the package of bills seems common-sense to me, the response of the state GOP seems both overwrought and against the desire of Michigan’s voters: a recent poll pegged support for universal background checks at nearly 88%.
Slotkin wasted no words:
Comparing gun safety measures to the mass extermination of 6 million people is hateful & ignorant, and it comes from party leaders who are out of ideas & catering to the fringe of the fringe. Delete it, apologize, and figure out what kind of party you want to be. https://t.co/ttDvi7EQiF
— Elissa Slotkin (@ElissaSlotkin) March 22, 2023
Meghan Reckling, former chair of the Livingston GOP, responded to the Michigan GOP tweet as well, with another former chair, Dan Wholihan, calling President Ronald Reagan a “gun grabber.”
Especially when Reagan was a gun grabber.
— Dan Wholihan (@DWholihan) March 22, 2023
Wholihan also tweeted in support of the state GOP’s opposition to gun control, quoting Adolf Hitler.
Translated from German:
""The greatest nonsense that could be done in the occupied eastern territories was to give arms to the conquered peoples. History teaches that all master races perished after granting arms to the peoples they subjugated."" – Adolf Hitler— Dan Wholihan (@DWholihan) March 22, 2023
Despite the Twitter fracas, Kristina Karamo, newly elected leader of the Michigan GOP, stands by the tweet:
MIGOP Chairwoman @KristinaKaramo responds to the bogus authoritarian frenzy over the legitimate comparison to the troubling history of governments that have disarmed their citizens. #Defend2A https://t.co/6bjz7qgPXy
— Michigan GOP (@MIGOP) March 22, 2023
After the beating it took at the polls in 2022, you’d think the Michigan GOP would have learned its lesson about what the state’s voters want from legislators. Instead, it feels like after losing its 40-year stranglehold on the state’s governance in the midterms — and then moving even farther right — the Michigan GOP seems determined to show us how much worse it can lose in 2024.
