And Clay Higgins’ tough talk was no longer aimed at fugitive criminals, as when he made viral crime videos at the second of two Louisiana police departments that subsequently hired him. Higgins had pointed to the attention he got from the videos to run for US Representative for Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District. He spoke as a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee during Wednesday’s hearing on assault weapons. He argued that Democrats are seeking to circumvent the Second Amendment by banning assault weapons and strongly envisioned shootouts between gun owners and federal agents. In the view of his former boss at the Opelousas Police Department, retired Chief Perry Gallow, what might have been mere theatrical disgust in Higgins’ former life as a Cajun Canyon cop was dangerous talk from a political leader at a dangerous time. And Higgins did so in a hearing that included two witnesses who had survived a mass shooting and three others who had lost a loved one. “In my opinion, the MP should choose his words wisely, because his words matter, and there are people on the edge who could retaliate based on his words and the words of anyone who might suggests,” Gallow said. Democratic leadership made its own use of video to open the hearing with powerful three-minute brief statements from people directly affected by mass shootings committed with assault weapons. It began with the massacre of 20 children and four adults in Newtown, Connecticut. “Hi, my name is Nicole, and almost 10 years ago, I survived the Sandy Hook shooting at my elementary school when I was only 7 years old,” said the first witness who appeared on the screen. “Even to this day, I struggle through the horrible result.” Nicole Melchionna was followed by David Sallak, who survived the July 4th parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that left seven dead. Two-year-old Aiden McCarthy was instantly orphaned. Eight-year-old Cooper Roberts was left paralyzed. “Our family was at the parade when I saw the shooter come out over the second floor roof line and point his long gun at my family and those around us and he fired rapidly,” Salak said. “I threw my wife and son behind a metal park bench to save our lives. After the shooting stopped, I saw Cooper’s father Roberts standing there screaming for help, while my wife saw their son Cooper crumple to the ground, shot in the abdomen and spine.” Next came another Highland Park survivor, Ashbey Beasley. “As we ran, holding hands, not knowing if someone was going to shoot us and if we were going to live or die, my son lost a huge part of his innocence,” she said. “It’s not the same person. He is broken and every day my husband and I are heartbroken as we try to help him get back to the carefree, sweet little boy he was before this happened.” Then came a teenager whose sister was one of the 19 children murdered in Texas in May. “Hi, I’m Jasmine Cazares. I am 17 and I lost my little sister, Jackie, in the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde. “ He held up a photo of Jacklyn Cazares in a white dress, photographed with angel wings. “This photo was taken at her first communion on May 10,” Jasmine Cazares said. “Sixteen days later, he was shot and killed [by] in the Daniel Defense AR-15.” Next was a mother Uvalde. “My name is Ana Rodriguez. I lost my daughter, Maite Rodriguez, on May 24, 2022, in the Robb school shooting. Maite was a sweet 10-year-old girl who dreamed of attending Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi to pursue a career in marine biology. Maite was robbed of her future by gun violence.” Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio hold a photo of their late daughter Alexandria Rubio, who was killed during the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, as they attend a House Oversight Committee hearing on July 27.

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Also there was the father of 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, who was killed in the mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida. “My name is Fred Guttenberg. I am the father of Jesse and Jaime Guttenberg. On February 14, 2018 I sent my two children to school to learn safely. Towards the end of that day, a gunman showed up at my daughter’s school, killing 17. My daughter was one of the 17 killed.” Also there was Tracey Maciulewicz, whose fiance, Andre Mackniel, was one of 10 fatally shot at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo. “My fiance was shot and killed on May 14th by a white man who was an activist when he went to Topps to buy our son a birthday cake. The shooter killed my fiance with a Bushmaster X 15″ rifle. Maciulewicz had her 3-year-old son in her arms as she posed a video question to the two gun company CEOs who had agreed to testify remotely. “What are you going to do…” she began to ask through tears. Her son hugged her and said, “It’s okay.” “… to make sure your products don’t fall into the hands of a white supremacist mass shooter who will father a child again?” The response from CEOs Marty Daniel of Daniel Defense and Christopher Killoy of Sturm, Ruger & Company was essentially that they would do nothing but buy and sell more and more assault weapons. Daniel seemed comfortable with himself, even though he had just heard a mother say that her daughter had been killed by a rifle he built that bore his name. Panel members asked questions and offered opinions consistent with their already stated views on assault weapons. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) owns a gun store called Clyde Armory in Athens and aligned himself with the CEOs. But that wasn’t enough for Louisiana’s Higgins. Cajun John Wayne predicted widespread bloodshed between gun owners and law enforcement if those in favor of legislation banning the sale of assault weapons succeed in passing it through the House. That’s not a sure thing, and it looks like there’s little chance of it passing the Senate. But just the prospect of it becoming law made Higgins crack up. “What my colleagues are doing is really, incredibly beyond anything reasonable or constitutional. All we’re leading up to here is a seizure of guns from the homes of law-abiding American citizens who have purchased those guns legally. You’re setting up gunfights in American homes.” He continued: “When do you think the ATF and the FBI are coming to our house? In the middle of the night. You are staging firefights between American citizens defending their homes from dark shadows, clearly armed, entering our home, our porch, and our front door. You are setting up death. He invoked the immediate future of “Americans killing Americans for some fantasy that you can define what a dangerous weapon is in the hands of these Americans, who live beyond their actual right to exercise their own decisions about what type of firearm they carry.” legally purchase and possess. It ‘s crazy. What you’re pushing is not going to end well. You can push this bill through a party-line vote, but the American people are not going to sit back and allow it to go unanswered.” A Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun is on display during a July 27 House Oversight hearing.

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He snapped his fingers as he continued. “People make decisions like that. Again, in the middle of the night.” He spoke as if he were the voice of experience. “You make some extreme stuff and you’re 100 percent responsible for it. My fellow Democrats, when these shootings happen, that blood will be on your hands.” He called the proposed ban a “political travesty of pretending to be able to identify weapons that you from your ivory tower in DC know best. “I can define the weapons that Americans should not have the right to own.” It already is, we can’t buy tanks or have a caliber over 50. We wear light weapons and have them. We own them legally. We intend to keep them.” He said the commission was heading down “a rabbit hole from which there is no escape”. “It finally ends with an American citizen standing up for that freedom… Will it be contested in court or settled on Americans’ front porches when the FBI and ATF show up to legally seize guns from a law-abiding American citizen?” For part of his time with Opelousas police, Higgins was on the SWAT team and served search warrants. His career there ended after a drug bust where he allegedly grabbed a bystander by the hair and then beat him. He didn’t help himself with what was seen as an attempted cover-up “Clay Higgins used unnecessary force on a subject while executing a warrant and later made false statements during an internal investigation. Although he later recanted his story and admitted to beating a handcuffed suspect, he later released him,” the Department’s Disciplinary Review Board found. “I think it’s irresponsible. And it’s disheartening when our leaders plant seeds of violence.” — Retired Opelousas Police Chief Perry Gallow Higgins did not respond to a Daily Beast request for comment. But in the version he later offered to the local press, he was kicked out of the department after he was heard calling Chief Agallow a “peacock.” “There’s a little more to it than that,” Gallow told The Daily Beast on Wednesday afternoon. When informed of Higgins’ dramatic speech about widespread bloodshed to ban assault weapons, Gallow initially suggested that Higgins was merely being dramatic for effect. “As it often is,” said Gallow. “I know there’s theater in politics right now and he’s doing it well.” But shortly after speaking to The Daily Beast, Gallow called. He had read…