Boebert draws backlash for family Christmas photo of kids posing with guns

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GETTY/Drew Angerer/Staff

(COLORADO) — Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Colorado Republican who is under threat of being removed from her committee assignment for Islamophobic comments targeted at fellow lawmakers, faced more backlash on Wednesday after sharing a family photo showing her four children posing with guns in front of a Christmas tree.

“The Boeberts have your six, @RepThomasMassie!” Boebert wrote on Twitter late Tuesday, in apparent solidarity with GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fellow gun enthusiast, who faced criticism for posting a similar photo last week of his family proudly holding firearms in front of their Christmas tree. Both families appeared smiling while heavily armed ahead of the holiday season.

 

 

“Santa, please bring more ammo,” Massie’s photo with his wife and six kids posted Dec. 4 was captioned.

 

 

“(No spare ammo for you, though),” Boebert added in her Dec. 7 tweet.

On the heels of Massie’s post last week but ahead of her own, Boebert offered her support to her colleague’s photo, tweeting, “That’s my kind of Christmas card!”

Boebert and Massie, appearing to share the photos of their families brandishing firearms in an apparent appeal to their bases, did so within a week of a mass shooting at a high school in Michigan that killed four students and left at least eight seriously injured. That shooting came days after the father of the 15-year-old suspect allegedly purchased him a gun as an early Christmas present.

Democrats have been quick to criticize both the photos of Boebert and Massie — with Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez mocking Boebert early Wednesday in a tweet that garnered nearly 100,000 likes and counting.

“Tell me again where Christ said “use the commemoration of my birth to flex violent weapons for personal political gain”?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the photo. “lol @ all the years Republicans spent on cultural hysteria of society ‘erasing Christmas and it’s meaning’ when they’re doing that fine all on their own.”

“When you pose in front of a Christmas Tree and can name all those guns but can’t name the gifts of the Wise Men,” the New York progressive added.

 

 

The backlash to Boebert’s photo comes as Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., plans to introduce a resolution on Wednesday to strip the Colorado Republican of her House committee assignments over her anti-Muslim remarks aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., — with the aim of forcing House Democratic leadership to punish Boebert before the end of the year. Omar said over the weekend she is confident House Speaker Nancy Pelos will take “decisive action.”

It’s far from the first time Boebert, a freshman in this Congress, has faced criticism.

The Colorado Republican who owns a gun-themed eatery called “Shooters” released a political ad earlier this year showing her walking around the Capitol, verbally attacking congressional Democrats and ending with the sound of a gunshot. She is also facing questions from Democrats over her potential ties to pro-Trump supporters that were present at the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The pro-democracy, progressive media PAC MeidasTouch tweeted late Tuesday that it would not post the “deranged” image of Boebert and her children “holding weapons of war” and instead, listed those killed last week in Michigan to “honor the teens who were murdered due to this fetishization of guns.”

 

 

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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