Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took to social media Sunday to politicize Saturday night’s shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and dozens of others injured.
After Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) sent out a tweet condemning the violence and expressing that the victims and their families were in her prayers, Ocasio-Cortez levied an attack on her colleague, suggesting she deserved blame for the attack.
Lauren Boebert, “you have played a major role in elevating anti-LBGT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws,” wrote the far-left New York congresswoman.
“You don’t get to ‘thoughts and prayers’ your way out of this. Look inward and change,” AOC added.
Ocasio-Cortez then posted a screenshot of the tweet to her Instagram and told followers to “[h]old people who promote bigotry and oppose common sense gun safety accountable.”
“Dehumanizing rhetoric leads to dehumanizing actions, which quickly translates to violence, shootings, assaults, and worse,” she added. “WE keep us safe and that means keeping others safe even if they aren’t in the room. ESPECIALLY when they aren’t in the room.”
The shootings at Club Q in Colorado Springs left five people dead and another 25 injured, Reuters’s Kevin Mohatt reports. Police have “identified the suspect as Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, and said he used a ‘long rifle’ during the brief but deadly attack.”
Bar patrons reportedly “subdued and disarmed” the gunman, CNN reported Sunday.
Reuters notes that police are investigating if hatred was the motivation behind the attack. Police will hold a press conference at 12:00 p.m. MST Monday.
In another tweet she also posted to Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez highlighted a number of mass shootings in recent years and tagged the Republican Party in the post, implying it bore responsibility in every instance.
“Connect the dots. People who are invested in dehumanizing and disenfranchising others aren’t ‘just joking,'” she wrote in her Instagram post.
“Bigots are actually quite serious about getting people to see other communities as dangerous, less than human, inferior or fundamentally broken in one way or another,” she added.