Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks attributed mass shootings to a decline in moral values, singling out single-parent families as a major factor in the phenomenon.
In a lengthy segment with host Sandra Smith, Brooks positioned himself as a staunch defender of unfettered gun rights, suggested that current mental health laws are adequate to identify individuals who might present a threat to public safety and maintained that in the race for an open Senate seat he is the candidate with an established track record of beating Democrats.
Brooks recently came in second to Katie Britt in the Republican primary for the seat being vacated by Richard Shelby. While Smith did give Brooks time to make his case on that race, the bulk of the show focused on the aftermath of the recent school shooting in Texas.
When Smith asked if Brooks would support any changes to gun laws currently on the books, he strongly implied the answer was no.
Brooks said the Second Amendment “is designed to help ensure that we the citizenry always have the right to take back our government should it become dictatorial,” he said. “That was a great fear of the founding fathers and quite frankly it’s a fear today.”
Stressing the “shall not be infringed” wording of that amendment, Brooks said that “if there are proposals out there that guarantee the rights of the American people to freely exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, then I’ll consider them.”
“What we have to do is to stop the motivation that causes these criminals, these horrific individuals, to do what they do,” he said, blaming a decline in moral values. He homed in on the issue of children raised by single parents. When asked by Smith if he was unfairly blaming single parents for mass shootings, he said that he was not blaming single parents, he was blaming moral decline.
“It’s almost impossible for a single parent to do the kind of job that two parents collectively can do. It’s just a numbers game,” Brooks told Smith. Single parents who raise well-adjusted children are “super parents,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the data is very clear,” he said. “Those single parent households, for whatever reason, end up resulting in children who are more likely to be on welfare; who are less likely to get the kind of grades you expect to get in school; who are more likely to be involved in drugs; and who are unfortunately, are more likely to be involved in criminal conduct. That’s just the data. That’s not to say that all single parents do that, okay? That’s not the data. We’re talking about probabilities and tendencies.”
Brooks has previously said the Texas massacre “reflects poorly on liberal policies that encourage out-of-wedlock childbirth, divorce, single-parent households and amoral values that undermines respect for life.”
Asked if he would support “red flag” laws to identify potentially dangerous people who should not be allowed to possess firearms, Brooks said current laws are adequate.
“I’m not talking about red flag laws,” he said. “I’m talking about a person who is a danger to others, that we already have laws for that are already on books.”
It was on the topic of the 2020 election and the possibility that Brooks might be subpoenaed by the Congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection that Brooks became most heated. When Smith said that repeated attempts to prove election fraud had failed to prove any, Brooks vehemently asserted that fraud had been a factor.
“What exactly did the president ask you to do after the 2020 election?” asked Smith, bringing up former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his endorsement of Brooks in the Senate race.
“The president and I had many conversations between September 1 and his decision to unendorse me that revolved around his being reinstated, revolved around his wanting to rescind the election,” Brooks said. “I can understand him wanting to do that, okay? He was robbed, in my judgment, in 2020, in his judgment he was robbed. So I can understand that desire.”
“The law does not permit us to do that,” said Brooks. Trump and the party could only look to regain lost ground in the 2022 and 2024 elections, he said.
As for the likelihood that he would be called before the committee, Brooks was wary.
“I don’t know if the committee has issued a subpoena or not,” he said. “I have not been served with any kind of documentation.” He said. In the same breath he referred to the panel as “the witch hunt committee” and said that “some of their communications have merit.”
Brooks said that should he appear before the committee, he wants the proceedings to be public.
The Congressman trailed Britt by a double-digit margin in the Republican primary, but said he was the best candidate to thwart a repeat of 2017 when “ruby-red Alabama” elected Democrat Doug Jones to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.
“I’m going to beat the Democrats,” Brooks said. “I have a history of beating democrats like a drum. I see no reason why this general election in November will be any different. They are socialist, they are dictatorial, they are amoral, they are absolutely the opposite of what we believe in in the state of Alabama.”