Donald Trump Jr has been slammed for going on a “tasteless” rant where he suggested that Uvalde mass shooter Salvador Ramos could have murdered his 21 victims with a “bat”.
The son of former president Donald Trump posted a rambling video on his Facebook page on Saturday where he argued that last week’s massacre could have unfolded with any other type of weapon.
He furiously ranted about people saying that “it’s the gun, it’s not the sociopath wielding it”.
“If it wasn’t for the gun, this kid would be a well-adjusted, reasonable individual, he’d be a wonderful human being, right?” he asked.
“He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat, or a bomb, or some sort of improvised device – or a machete?”
Mr Trump Jr’s rant comes amidst an uproar over how an 18-year-old could walk into a store and buy two AR-15 rifles and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition legally and without raising any alarm bells in the state of Texas.
During his tirade, he lamented that guns will be blamed for the mass shooting that left 19 young children and two teachers dead.
“They’ll blame it on the guns, they’ll blame it on everything because no one can possibly take responsibility for their actions,” he said.
“No one can admit somebody is actually a piece of garbage and screwed up. We can’t have that, that would be mean!”
While he sought to defend the availability of firearms, Mr Trump Jr instead pushed the blame for the mass shooting onto a “drug-addict mother”, “missing father”, “indoctrination programmes in schools” and “crazy teachers”.
He claimed that there is “no accountability” and that people are not able to speak up about the real cause of the massacre.
“We’re not allowed to actually say anything about it. We all know if you actually see something and say something, you’re labeled, you’re bigoted, ‘I can’t believe you’d do that’, maybe you misgendered the person,” he said.
“They’ll go after you for hate crimes, you’ll get sued for stating the obvious. You’re not allowed to actually say something, you’re supposed to but we all know how it really works right.”
Social media users hit out at his comments, branding them “stupid” and “tasteless”.
“In an incredible display of stupidity, Donald Trump Jr angrily ranted that the Uvalde killer could have killed his victims with a ‘bat’,” one person tweeted.
Another person chimed in: “Has Donald Trump Jr. been hoodwinked or does he really believe his own wild rant about the shooting in Uvalde, Texas?”
Meanwhile, one person simply tweeted: “Take Jr’s guns away first.”
His comments come 16 years after Buckingham Palace was forced to apologise when Prince Philip tried to make a similar argument in the aftermath of the Dunblane massacre.
In 1996, 16 children and one teacher were shot and killed by a gunman in Dunblane Primary School in Scotland.
Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, who passed away last year, compared banning handguns to banning cricket bats.
”If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean are you going to ban cricket bats?” he asked.
His comments drew sharp criticism from the victims’ families and the Palace issued an apology saying he did not mean to cause “offence or distress”.
Following the Dunblane massacre, the UK introduced stricter gun laws, including a ban on owning handguns.
There has not been a school shooting in the UK since.
Last year, Governor Greg Abbott relaxed gun laws even further in the Lone Star State, allowing most Texans to carry handguns openly in public without any training or a permit.
Long guns, such as the weapons used in last week’s attack, could already be carried without a permit.
Ramos legally bought two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition in the days after his 18th birthday on 16 May.
On 24 May, he then shot his grandmother in the face before driving towards Robb Elementary School in the family’s truck.
He abandoned the vehicle in a ditch close to the school and entered the building through a door that was propped open.
Once inside, Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom where he shot dead 19 students and two teachers.
He was finally shot dead by Border Patrol agents after officials stormed the classroom.
Mr Abott – and other Republicans – have come under fire over the state’s lax regulations in the aftermath of the shooting.
Democratic candidate for governor Beto O’Rourke confronted him during a press conference on Wednesday telling him that the massacre was “totally predictable” after the state refused to implement gun control laws.
The governor was then met with boos and jeers on Sunday as he joined President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the memorial outside Robb Elementary School as calls continue to grow for the US to implement greater gun reform measures.
Meanwhile, questions are also mounting over the handling of the mass shooting after local officials admitted that critical mistakes were made.
Officers on the scene hung back, taking 77 minutes to enter the barricaded classroom while gunshots continued to ring out and desperate children trapped inside called 911 begging for help.
The Justice Department has launched a probe into what happened.
