Retweet if you agree → The sit-in by House Democrats is nothing more than a publicity stunt. #StopTheStunthttps://t.co/YGgl2yLHyB
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) June 22, 2016
Early on Thursday, House Democrats launched a sit-in in response to their proposed gun legislation being immediately shut down by Republicans. This followed a nearly fifteen-hour-long filibuster that Democrats held in an attempt to make something — anything — happen in regards to gun legislation after the horrific Pulse shooting in Orlando this month. The country has been divided for a long time now, and this shooting only forced long-lingering issues to bubble up to the surface, namely about terrorism, Islamic extremism, and gun control.
Pundits on every side of the spectrum have been speaking out, and while not everything proposed by the Democrats in this latest powerplay made a ton of sense or had everyone agreeing with it, most would agree that it was nice to see them at least trying to do something for once. You gotta commend them for that, right? Paul Ryan appeared on CNN earlier today to discuss this whole shut-down of the proposed legislation, and people are pretty upset at his attitude towards the whole thing.
It all started, as most things tend to do nowadays, with a tweet. The tweet above was from Paul Ryan, with him asking supporters to retweet the video of him from CNN. The interview was full of the usual, coded language that Republicans have been using to frame the attack; constitutional rights, due process and of course, terrorism. Ryan called the sit-in nothing more than a publicity stunt and that this piece of legislation had already failed to pass in the Senate, making the whole thing ridiculous to him.
The responses on Twitter have been pretty much exactly what you’d expect here. People are not happy with Ryan, and the House this time around and they are telling him that. That tweet, as well as other tweets that have been posted on his account in the mean time have been getting some serious traction.
https://twitter.com/drew/status/745764476029308930
delete your account.
— Seth Bloom (@Sconnieseth) June 22, 2016
https://twitter.com/AndrewKarter/status/745764324837318656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/J_L1212/status/745764239315369984
There are, of course, people arguing on the other side of the spectrum as well. It should be noted that these replies are usually in response to people calling out Ryan, though, not actually in response to Ryan himself.
https://twitter.com/Daniel128711/status/745768325175607302
https://twitter.com/CF7CMZ/status/744972252215578624
https://twitter.com/flippers751/status/745783783316545537
No let ME explain slowly. Guns have been around for over 200 years, the shootings are recent. Is that simple enough for you?
— Lacyheart (@lacyheart) June 20, 2016
What can we glean from all of this? Parts of America want gun reform, while others simply do not. So no, we really haven’t learned anything at all. Instead we are just in the quagmire that is America in 2016 where everyone thinks that the other guy knows nothing and that only they and those who agree with them are privy to “the truth.”