AR-15 Giveaway To 'Fight Looters' During Pandemic: GOP Candidate
GAINESVILLE, GA — With the coronavirus pandemic spreading, a Georgia Republican running for Congress is giving away a semiautomatic rifle to one “lucky” supporter who can use it to shoot “looting hordes from Atlanta.”
Paul Broun, a Tea Party Republican and former U.S. representative running for the state’s open District 9 House seat, announced a sweepstakes Friday to give away an AR-15 rifle to one person who signs up for emails from his campaign website. (Watch his video at the end of this article.)
Accompanying the announcement was a video that shows Broun hiking through a field and shooting his AR-15. Near the end of the video, he shoots what appears to be an animal in the distance, and off-camera cries of indeterminate origin can be heard.
“Whether it’s looting hordes from Atlanta or a tyrannical government from Washington, there are few better liberty machines than an AR-15,” Broun said in the video while holding the semiautomatic rifle.
Atlanta’s population is majority African American. Broun is based in nearby Hall County, which is mostly white but which also has a sizeable Hispanic population.
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Broun told The Guardian in a Tuesday phone interview that his reference to “looting hordes from Atlanta” was “not racial.”
“Only the liberal press would take that kind of position. There are a lot of white people in Atlanta as well,” Broun said to The Guardian. “Ma’am, I have been a keynote speaker at an MLK Day Celebration.”
Broun — who referred to the new coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” — referred to unrest in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, after African American protests against people at the hands of police officers as examples of what might happen if the pandemic upends society. He also cited Denver, Colorado, and Missoula, Montana, as possibilities.
“I think you will see looting hordes come out of the cities and go anywhere,” Broun told The Guardian. “We are going to see people that think they’re entitled to TV sets, automobiles or anything else, and they’re going to take them.”
Broun isn’t the first Georgia politician to leverage gun rights as a campaign selling point during the coronavirus crisis. In March, a Republican gun store owner also running for Georgia’s District 9 sued Athens-Clark County government to ensure businesses like his stay open during the shelter-in-place order.
The Athens Banner-Herald reports that the lawsuit was dismissed Monday.
Riots aside, those who live in north Georgia are expressing concern about Atlantans who use coronavirus restrictions as an excuse to take vacations in the mountains.
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“There’s still folks pouring out of the hot spots in Atlanta and the different places that want to get up and go in the mountains and get away from the rat race down there,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell said to Atlanta TV station 11Alive. “But if they would stay down there and isolate and just get through this, this thing (the coronavirus) will start to flatten out and it’ll go away.”
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