CNN anchor Chris Cuomo wishes you morons would stop praying for the victims of gun violence. Because why call on God when you can call on a congressman?
“We can’t even have a conversation” about gun violence, Cuomo said Thursday evening as he addressed a mass shooting in California that claimed 12 lives.
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“The only consensus there is, is in a canard and here it is. First, I would like to offer my thoughts and prayers because that’s what you do when you offer thoughts and prayers,” the noted First Amendment expert (that’s sarcasm) added. “You mock those who lost loved ones because if you gave it any thought at all, you would never walk away from any of these without figuring out a better way to deal with them.”
He continued, asking, “And prayer? You think leaving it to God is the answer? We pray for strength, we pray for wisdom, for resolve, but we clearly don’t want to act on any of those here. So what are you praying for?”
Perhaps he can call his brother, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who still claims some kind of Roman Catholic identity, and ask what it means to “pray for the repose” of someone’s soul.
Look, I know the Cuomos are the sort of Catholics who can try to be Catholic with one brain and support abortion with the other. (At least they all think they have two brains.) But are they this illiterate on all the points of the faith? Did the CNN anchor just reveal on national television that he is unaware that people of many faith traditions — not just Catholics — pray for the dead? And does he think the post-mass shooting prayers are supposed to be all requests that God make the bad men go away? It is okay for us to pray for the survivors, who risk PTSD, or the families of the dead, who will suffer emotionally for the rest of their lives, long after Cuomo has moved on from gun control to his next pet cause?
Meanwhile, is he really going to remain this over-optimistic about the power of law after a shooting such as this one took place in the heavy gun control state of California? After all, prayer was probably more effective for those who survived the shooting than any of the laws against murder, brandishing and discharging firearms in public, or carrying firearms in bars. The perpetrator in Thousand Oaks probably broke dozens of laws. Passing more of them, unlike prayer, is certain to be futile.
Moreover, it may come as a surprise to Cuomo, but offering prayers while also opposing knee-jerk gun control proposals does not mean people are leaving the matter of gun violence up to God. It just means they think your “we-must-do-something-no-matter-how-futile-or-counterproductive” attitude toward legislation, and your proposals, are at best useless and and at worst an infringement on their constitutional rights.
“What would it take? How about a stadium full of children of the most influential people in our society all holding puppies? What if they were all shot and killed? Would we act?” the very serious and definitely not hyperbolic Cuomo continued. “The next time is coming. And more and more, you, me, our leaders, we’re all becoming part of the problem. Think and pray on that.”
In other words, prayer is nice and all, but why don’t you make yourself useful and do something left-wing?
That’ll win those clingers over.
There are two things I always assume about the people who mock post-mass shooting thoughts and prayers. Either they don’t believe in prayer and don’t pray, or they don’t believe in prayer but they pray anyway for appearances’ sake.
Far dumber than either of these, however, is to scold other people for praying. That’s bizarre and weirdly antagonistic behavior, yet here we are again with the umpteenth iteration of exactly that.
