Marjorie Taylor Greene knocks Graham for openness to voting on gun legislation

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his openness to voting on gun control legislation, arguing such measures were going to “hurt the very people that voted for him and put him in office.”

“Here’s the major problem: Why would we have a Republican senator from South Carolina ready to go to vote on radical gun control bills? They’re gonna hurt the very people that voted for him and put him in office. You see, South Carolina is not a blue state. No, South Carolina is a red state,” Greene said during an episode of “MTG Live.”

“There’s a lot of gun owners in South Carolina, and they are not going to be very happy with the senator that they elected and sent to Washington, D.C., to represent their values, to defend their freedoms, and protect their gun rights and uphold the Constitution,” she continued. “They’re not going to like it very much when he’s up here helping Joe Biden pass his communist agenda and go ahead and destroy their Second Amendment rights.”

Greene directed those comments at Graham, who is involved in bipartisan Senate negotiations on gun legislation, after he issued a statement following President Biden’s speech urging Congress to take specific actions in response to recent mass shootings.

“I stand ready to vote on ALL the proposals mentioned by President Biden tonight and encourage the Democratic Leader to bring them forward for votes,” Graham tweeted.

“I also stand ready to work across the aisle to find common ground – something that was absent from President Biden’s address to the nation,” he said in a follow-up tweet.

Greene also said of the South Carolina Republican that he “wants to make sure that your tax dollars are helping people in Ukraine to defend themself, but he stands ready to vote for all of Joe Biden’s gun control bills.”

Graham’s office did not provide a comment to The Hill on the matter. 

Graham’s tweets do not indicate which way he would be voting on gun legislation. He made his remarks after Biden that evening called for Congress to expand background checks and ban high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons.

The nation has been reeling after several high-profile shootings in Tulsa, Okla., Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y. A bipartisan group of senators is working on gun legislation while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed that a gun package will be voted on this week. 

Democrats will ultimately need 10 Senate Republicans to back gun reform legislation to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to end a filibuster. Senators have acknowledged they need more time on negotiations but have said they are making progress.