During the closing remarks at Thursday’s Sandoval County Commission meeting, first-term Democrat Commissioner Katherine A. Bruch of the First District made eyebrow-raising comments regarding mass shootings, claiming recent uses of guns to kill can be attributed to the “color” of peoples’ skin and “the shape of their face.”
Across the country, the media has been fixated on crimes involving Asian American and Pacific Islanders after a gunman in Atlanta, Georgia shot up multiple massage parlors where he killed eight people, including people of multiple races. It has been surmised that the shootings were tied to sex addiction, not racial hatred.
Bruch said during the meeting, “This has kinda been a hard week in many ways with more mass shootings and even longer than that, with certain communities being assaulted more directly and I know I have some family members that fall into some categories that are more visible for whatever reason and I am just very saddened that we are having these individuals that are—for whatever reason—going out and shooting or assaulting people because of the color of their skin and the shape of their face.”
“So, I just want you all to remember them in your thoughts and prayers, and then let’s get to work and let’s do something more effective than thinking about them by getting serious about helping with mental health, making sure that we provide the correct training and tools for our law enforcement, and that we are regulating the possession of weapons by those who have no business owning them,” she concluded.
Second-term Republican Commissioner Jay Block of the Second District chimed in on the conversation after Bruch’s assessment regarding the need for more gun bans amid shootings. He took exception to her comments regarding face shape because he has children who are interracial.
He said, “I am not sure what the ‘shape of their face’ means. We all have different shapes of faces unless you’re talking about my kids who are interracial. I don’t know. I would maybe change those words a little bit.”
This is just the latest racially questionable comment made by a Democrat politician in recent weeks after Democrat nominee for Congress, state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-Bernalillo) said that displaced Navajo workers who would be losing their good-paying jobs “can sell their art or their wool” instead, insinuating that Native American workers can somehow shift focus in their job prospects to another field that Stansbury stereotypically decided was arts and crafts.