The daughter of a Newtown victim is calling out “Joe the Plumber” and his “‘dead kid’ callousness.”
“You’re the one who’s out of touch,” Erica Lafferty, daughter of the school principal who was gunned down along with 20 young students and five other teachers in Newtown in 2012, wrote in a scathing op-ed Thursday.
Earlier this week, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who became infamous during John McCain’s failed 2008 presidential bid, injected himself into the fallout of the latest national shooting tragedy in Santa Barbara. In response to the father of one of the victims who spoke out against gun laws, Wurzelbacher penned a blistering letter saying “your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights.”
Lafferty said she found it “refreshing” to see his words so “unvarnished,” but they could not be ignored. “I wouldn’t have dignified his disgusting comments with a response if it didn’t follow such a disturbing pattern among gun extremists in this country,” she wrote.
Since her mother’s death, Lafferty has become a staunch gun control advocate. In the op-ed, she points to the number of gun violence survivors who have faced fierce, and sometimes violent, opposition from “gun extremists.” “We need responsible gun owners to stand up and say ‘enough is enough,’” she said. “If prioritizing guns over dead kids makes you angry, stand up and drown his words out with action.”
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