In the wake of the mass shooting at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado that left ten dead, including a police officer, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) did his utmost to divert the conversation away from assault-style weapons such as the type used to commit the massacre.
In his telling, the real culprit is the recent protests against police brutality.
The gun violence, Cotton argued, is exacerbated by "systematic attacks on our police and law enforcement professionals for years, calling them racist and bigoted and prejudiced ... when you make it harder to do their job, you shouldn't be surprised that criminals take advantage."
Republicans have frequently sought to blame a number of social ills on the police brutality protests, which erupted fresh last year in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the maiming of Jacob Blake by an officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The protests were even used as a deflection for the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters in January.
