Republican congressional candidate Keith Fimian, who is challenging Rep. Gerry O’Connolly in Northern Virginia’s 11th District, apologized Friday for saying that the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech could have been thwarted if more students had been carrying guns.
In comments Democrats have seized on to portray Fimian as “too extreme,” the Republican contender told a television interview that “if one of those kids in one of those classrooms was packin’ heat, I think that would not have happened.”
“It was a horrible choice of words,” Fimian said during a debate with his opponent, incumbent Rep. Gerry Connolly, on WTOP’s Politics Program with Mark Plotkin. “I regret it and I apologize for it.” Fimian said he’d been caught off guard by the question about guns in a race that has focused almost exclusively on economic issues.
Fimian’s apology did nothing to quell Connolly’s efforts to make the episode into a campaign issue.
“I just heard your apology, but I was appalled at what I saw [in the] interview,” Connolly said. “I’d like to know what you were thinking beyond the words – what in the world were you thinking and what are you going to say to the grieving families in Fairfax with that kind of intemperate and extreme remark?”
Though he specifically cited students in the classroom during the interview, Fimian said he meant to say “that had there been security guards on campus, the assailant would have thought twice and it may have been prevented. But the fact is that we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and our children…and the mentally ill and domestic abusers.”
In a later debate on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi show, Connolly said that Fimian was trying to have it both ways on the issue.
