AOC seizes on California synagogue shooting to promote gun control legislation

“Heartbroken to hear of the San Diego synagogue shooting, particularly so on this final day of Passover. We have a responsibility to love + protect our neighbors,” she said in a tweet. “The longer the Senate delays holding a vote on #HR8, the more we put Americans at risk.”

One woman was killed after a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California. At least three others were injured. The suspect was arrested shortly after the shooting and taken into custody by local law enforcement officials. The suspect’s motives were not made public at the time of his arrest.

The congresswoman’s tweet is a lousy, self-promoting response for a couple of reasons.

First, her response was quick enough that she had to have known very little about the attacker or the attack itself when she sent it. She most certainly knew nothing of the motivations of the gunman. The congresswoman blindly spouted off, most likely because she saw an opportunity to promote the House’s pro-gun control legislation. How noble of her.

Second, it is probably worth mentioning that Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet calling for stricter gun control laws came almost immediately after a shooting event in California, which has some the strictest (if not the strictest) firearm laws in the nation. Of the top 10 most-restrictive states, California scores first place, according to the Brady Campaign. California gets an “A” rating from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state’s gun control laws are “among the toughest in the nation,” according to the New York Times. And so on.

There is a larger conversation to be had about the effect that states with laxer gun control laws have on the states that strive for strict enforcement. There is also a conversation to be had about Eugene Volokh’s finding that there is “zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws.” But let’s maybe wait until the victims have at least buried their dead before spouting off half-cocked on Twitter.

Finally, Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks grieving over a synagogue shooting would probably hold more weight had she not famously circled the wagons for her colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., an actual anti-Semite. Considering the lengths to which Ocasio-Cortez went to protect her friend from congressional censure for claiming, among other things, that wealthy Jews own the congressional GOP and that Jewish Americans have divided loyalties if they support Israel’s right to exist, a cynical person would suspect that the New York congresswoman’s remarks this weekend are animated more by self-promotion and ideology than by genuine grief for the Poway victims.

But I am not that cynical.