GOP representative pulls out his handgun at a constituent meeting to make a point about gun policy

A handgun
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Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) was speaking with constituents about gun policy at a diner on Friday when he decided to place his own loaded handgun on a table in service to a point.

"I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords," he told Charleston's Post and Courier, referring to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who survived being shot in the head while talking to constituents outside a grocery store. "I don't mind dying," Norman added, "but whoever shoots me better shoot well or I'm shooting back." Later, he said to CNN he "merely proved a point that guns themselves are not the issue;" criminality and mental illness are.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.