‘Just Shut Up’: Minnesota Senator Rages At RFK Jr. Trying to Link Antidepressants, Not Guns, to Mass Shooting
AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) tore into Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday after Kennedy told Fox News he was opening an investigation into whether or not antidepressants are linked to mass shootings – like the one in her state on Wednesday.
Fox host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy, “I know we’re all watching this together, Mr. Secretary, and wondering how we can prevent it. We’re still trying to get a lot of answers to a ton of questions, but the one thing is clear: You are dealing with a person who is trans, who was transitioning. Are you going to be examining it all, some of the drugs that are used in order to make that transition happening, to see if it plays a role? Because we also know there was a trans shooter in the Tennessee situation.”
“We are doing those kind of studies now at NIH. We’re launching studies on potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” Kennedy replied on Fox & Friends, adding:
Many of them, on — had black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. So we can’t exclude those as a culprit and those are the kind of studies we’re doing.
Later, Kennedy added, “There are black box warnings on some of these psychiatric drugs that warn about in clinical trials that they saw suicidal and homicidal ideation. We are going into that with an open mind.”
Smith hit back hard at Kennedy and wrote, “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do.”
“Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired,” Smith wrote, having named the location of Wednesday’s horrific shooting that left two school children dead in a church.
Smith later added, “There are 400 million guns in this country. More guns than people. In America, we are ten times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation.”
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