Fox News host and former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy questioned stricter gun control legislation when he was in office and took money from the National Rifle Association. But live on air Wednesday, in the wake of the deadly shooting in Minnesota, he appeared to have a change of heart.
“We’re going to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children,” he told the hosts of Fox News’ “Outnumbered” after a gunman fired bullets into a back-to-school Mass, killing two young children and injuring 17 others.
“I mean, how many school shootings does it take before we’re going to have a conversation about keeping firearms out,” he continued, echoing calls from gun violence prevention groups. Shooters are often white males, he also pointed out.
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The show’s hosts questioned his stance. Lisa Boothe suggested there were already enough laws on the books to protect people from gun violence, and Rachel Campos-Duffy offered more policing in schools and suggested anti-depressants were to blame ― echoing the baseless claims made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy.
Gowdy pushed back.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“What does it say about our culture that everywhere you go, you have to have a cop to keep you alive?” he said. “We’ve got to decide whether or not we want to live like this.”
Gowdy, who hosts Fox News’ “Sunday Night in America,” wasn’t so vocal on gun control when he served in the House from 2011 to 2019. During a CBS News appearance in the wake of 2018′s Parkland shooting, Dowdy dismissed the idea of focusing on bans on assault-style weapons, saying he’d seen people use everything “from shovels to bricks to rope to hands” to kill people when he was a federal prosecutor. “You’re equally dead,” he concluded.
And in a 2018 Fox News appearance surfaced by The New Republic, Gowdy resisted new gun restrictions.
“Before we began to advocate for new laws, I think it is eminently fair to say, ‘How are we doing enforcing the ones we currently have?’” he said.
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The sentiment was similar to one he shared when he spoke at the NRA’s 2016 leadership forum.
“There is gun control,” he said. “There are controls over who can have guns, where you can have them and what kind of guns you can have.”
