During a round-table discussion aired by Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA on Monday, self-styled intelligence analyst and former deputy assistant to President Trump Sebastian Gorka said, “black Africans” in Chicago were killing each other “by the bushel.”
Gorka made the statement while commenting on the legislative effort to ban "bump stocks" — the legal gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to mimic the firing speed of automatic weapons — in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre on October 1.
Stephen Paddock was able to kill 59 people and wound more than 500 that day in part because he modified some of his weapons using bump stocks.
Gorka denied that bump stocks are a problem, saying, “The biggest problem we have is not mass shootings, they are the anomaly. You do not make legislation out of outliers.”
Mother Jones reports that there have been eight mass shootings, including one no more than 10 days ago, so far this year in the United States. The publication counts more than 35 since 2012. Gorka did not explain how mass shootings that are this frequent are outliers.
However, in a classic bait and switch, Gorka did seize upon a go-to scapegoat saying, “Our big issue is black African gun crime against black Africans,” he said. “It is a tragedy. Go to Chicago. Go to — the city’s run by Democrats for 40 years. Black young men are murdering each other by the bushel. This is a social issue. Allow the police to do their jobs and re-build those societies. Legislation will not save lives."
On a Sinclair station, Gorka refers to "black African crime on black African crime" & says black men are killing each other "by the bushel" pic.twitter.com/Cbtqm39tTd
— Yashar Ali ???? (@yashar) October 24, 2017
Gorka has a history of problematic views that far predates this statement. Long connected to far-right groups, the British-born immigrant and former editor at Breitbart News first made a name for himself as a “counter-terrorism expert” by venomously espousing the "supposed" dangers of Islam.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WJLA and more than 170 other stations around the United States, has recently come under fire for allegedly forcing its stations to broadcast corporate-produced conservative content, according to Last Week Tonight.
