Rep. Lauren Boebert caught redhanded on the House floor lying about why she arms her waitstaff
Poor Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
The Colorado freshman GOP legislator seemed destined to be the most notoriously disruptive right-wing gun-nut elected to Congress in the 2020 election, only to see her shooting star eclipsed by the media attention funneled towards her Georgia Republican colleague Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Despite the lower profile that Rep. Boebert has displayed since being accused of possibly escorting members of the right-wing militias who later stormed the Capitol Building on tours of the complex in the days preceding the violent event, the gun-toting owner of the Shooter’s Grill in Rifle, Colorado, is making moves to rectify her recent absence from the spotlight.
Boebert was fully in her element today as she participated in the debate over pending Democratic legislation that would enact the sensible gun regulations that Americans have been waiting for since the epidemic of mass public shootings began during the past decade.
As the Second Amendment devotee argued her case against legislation that would strengthen background checks for gun purchasers, she repeated a lie about the origins of her policy of arming all of the wait staff in her eating and drinking establishment that she owns, undermining any credibility she has as an advocate for her constituents’ concerns about the bill.
So, on the House floor, Lauren Boebert just argued against gun background checks by telling a story about a man being beaten to death outside her restaurant in CO. But the story is a lie. The man actually died of a drug overdose: https://t.co/fjIRGZkqDP pic.twitter.com/UZn9swvdlQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 10, 2021
The Colorado Sun, in a well-researched feature article last September on Boebert’s rise to power in the face of multiple arrests and subsequent failures to appear in court, provided the true account of the man who was supposedly murdered outside her business.
“In a story Boebert has made an integral part of her personal lore in speeches and interviews, she has often repeated that she decided to arm herself and her waitresses because she feared for everyone’s safety after a man was “murdered” in the alley behind her new restaurant,” the newpaper wrote.
“’There was a violent altercation in our back alley where a man was physically beaten to death and it immediately prompted the question, ‘How will I defend my people?’ So, I began to carry that day,’ Boebert told the Durango Herald last year.”
“The Rifle Police Department has no record of such a murder. A man did die on the sidewalk down the street from Shooters in the early morning of Aug. 22, 2013. Initially, it was investigated as a possible homicide, but an autopsy determined the man died from a drug overdose,” The Colorado Sun revealed.
Boebert’s myth-making fable may play well with her militia acquaintances, but the use of an outright lie while making her case against legislation that she opposes does not help her credibility nor does it serve her constituents’ interests.
Then again, when you’ve slipped from the top slot in the best Trump impersonation contest among Congressional newcomers — and have something to prove — adherence to the truth seems to matter little.
The sooner that either Boebert’s fellow members of the House of Representatives or her Colorado constituents send her back to her job running her militarized bar and grill, the better.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Nancy Lofholm at The Colorado Sun.
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