Sen. John Kennedy (M-LA), an ardent Trump supporter, tried his best to smear Dr. Megan Ranney of the Yale School of Public Health at a Senate hearing on gun crime in Chicago, but he ended up looking like a petulant dotard instead.
Kennedy started by asking Ramey what he thought was a clever trap question: "Why do you think that Chicago has become America's largest outdoor shooting range? You think it's because of Chicago citizens who have no criminal record, but who have lawfully a gun in their home for protection? Or perhaps for hunting? Or do you think it's because of a finite group of criminals who have rap sheets as long as King Kong's arm?"
Ranney didn't take the bait. Instead, she told Kennedy that the state he represents is deadlier than Chicago.
"So Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri actually have higher firearm death rates," she said. "Obviously, there's certainly —
Unhappy with where this was going, Kennedy interrupted her and asked, "What about Chicago?"
"I don't live in Chicago," she said. "It's not my primary area of research." But she went on to say that Chicago's gun violence could likely be attributed to "easy access to firearms combined with environmental conditions," and "lack of great education. There's actually been studies showing that when you [add] green vacant lots and repair abandoned buildings in urban neighborhoods, you see decreases in gunshots and violence as well as in stress and depression in the neighborhoods around them.
Kennedy, knowing that his tactic had failed miserably, took the easy way out by pretending he didn't understand what Ranney was saying.
"No disrespect doc," he sniffed, "but that sounds a lot like word salad to me."
No disrespect Johnny, but your attempt to belittle Dr. Ranney's informed perspective inadvertently showcased your own willful ignorance of a complex problem.
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