CommentsGUN SAFETY - Anti-LGBTQ congresswoman and gun nut Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says she’s very concerned about children’s safety, like when she falsely claimed that transgender people prey on children.
But a new video has proven that she is likely more dangerous to children — namely, her own eight-year-old son who she allows to play around loaded rifles.
Related: Lauren Boebert complains that Joe Biden isn’t nice enough to unvaccinated Americans
A now-deleted TikTok video showed Boebert’s young son singing, dancing, and playing with cigarette lighters while left alone in a bedroom, mere feet away from loaded rifles on a wall display and one stored behind a bed headboard. Her son has also posted several other now-deleted TikTok videos showing his young friends playing in the bedroom with zero parental supervision.
The bedroom appears to be the same bedroom that Boebert used during her February Zoom video call with the House Natural Resources Committee. During the call, she showed the room had a bookshelf displaying several high-capacity rifles.
“This would appear to violate a new Colorado state law, under which gun owners are required to store their deadly weapons in a gun safe, with a trigger or cable lock, whenever the owner is aware, or should reasonably be aware, that a ‘juvenile or a resident who is ineligible to possess a firearm can gain access to the firearm,'” Salon noted. She didn’t respond to the publication’s request for comment.
When online commenters criticized her display at the time for possibly violating the Colorado gun storage rule, she responded, “Who says this is storage? These are ready for use.”
That would mean that her eight-year-old child and his friends regularly play around firearms that are loaded and “ready for use,” unsupervised.
Her son’s other videos have shown him playing with lighters, which could injure him or start a fire.
Screenshot showing Lauren Boebert’s son playing near a rifleScreenshot showing Lauren Boebert’s son playing near a rifle via Salon
The videos highlight Boebert’s contradictory behavior, feigning concern for child safety as well as her self-proclaimed status as a “responsible gun owner” while not taking basic gun safety measures for her own child. She owns the Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado, a gun-themed restaurant. She requires employees to openly carry guns at work.
She is also firmly against government firearm regulations, possibly because she is worried she would violate new regulations.
Her endangerment of her son is concerning, almost as concerning as she has felt about kids being harmed by non-existent trans locker room predators and gay cartoon characters.
Earlier this year, she spoke on the House floor against the pro-LGBTQ Equality Act, stating, “Where is the equity in this legislation for the young girls across America who will have to look behind their backs as they change in school locker rooms, just to make sure there isn’t a confused man trying to catch a peek?”
Her baseless claim and characterization of trans women as “confused men” has long encouraged transphobes to attack trans people as would-be child rapists.
She also believes that gay people – and gay cartoon characters – are a threat to children.
On June 13, 2020, Boebert tweeted, “I don’t think a show that primarily caters to the 12 & under crowd needs to reveal to the world that their lead character is gay, straight or anything else. Enough of the craziness with Spongebob.”
The Nickelodeon cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants never come out as gay.
There’s no national gun violence database to indicate how often children with guns kill themselves or others.
However, an estimated one in three U.S. homes with children has a gun, according to a July 2019 report from the Harvard Medical School. That’s nearly 22 million children living in homes with guns. An estimated three out of four children living in a house with a gun knows where the guns are stored, even when their parents think they’ve hidden them well, the reports added.
While parents might think that their kids know better than to touch guns, studies have found that most will still handle any gun they find, even if they’ve been taught not to, according to Nichole L. Michaels, a senior research scientist at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute.
Experts recommend that guns be securely kept in a home safe and kept unloaded, with ammunition stored separately.
(This article was first published on LGBTQNation.com)
