US Congressman Posts Family Christmas Photo with Guns, Days after School Shooting
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A United States congressman on Saturday posted a Christmas picture of himself and what appeared to be his family members, smiling and posing with an assortment of guns, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a Michigan high school.
"Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo," Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky wrote on Twitter, Reuters reported.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, last Tuesday carried out the deadliest US school shooting this year, the latest in a decades-long series of mass shootings at American schools.
His parents were arrested on Saturday in connection with the slayings.
Mr. Massie, who represents a solidly Republican district, posted the picture of himself and six others holding firearms resembling an M60 machine gun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Thompson submachine gun.
Some semi-automatic weapons are made to look nearly identical to fully automatic weapons like machine guns.
Under US law, weapons like machine guns are restricted to the military, law enforcement officers and civilians who have obtained special licences for weapons made before May 1986.
Mr. Jonathan van Norman, a campaign manager for Mr. Massie, did not immediately reply to a request for comment via Twitter.
Democratic US Representative John Yarmuth, who chairs the US House of Representatives Budget Committee, condemned his fellow Kentuckian's post.
"I'm old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy," Mr. Yarmuth wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to calls for gun control laws.
The shooting in Oxford, Michigan - in which four teenagers were killed and a teacher and six other students were wounded - was the latest in a string of sometimes-deadlier incidents that have prompted fierce debates over school safety, gun control and gun rights.
