A Democratic senator has actually asked, with all seriousness, if using tear gas on illegal aliens storming the U.S. border and assaulting border agents with weapons constituted a violation of international policy against chemical weapons in war.
Let that sink in.
Following reports that U.S. border agents had shot several rounds of non-lethal teargas at migrants trying to tear down sections of the U.S. border fence while lobbing rocks and other projectiles at border security,Brian Schatz, a sitting Democratic senator from Hawaii, tossed out this now-deleted nugget of total nonsense Sunday night:
It doesn’t, of course, considering that the Chemical Weapons Convention only outlaws the large-scale production, use and transfer of lethal gases used as weapons of war, not the use of teargas for basic riot control.
As the dropped-jawed responses began piling up, Schatz deleted his tweet within minutes and replaced it with:
Anyone uncomfortable with spraying tear gas on children is welcome to join the coalition of the moral and the sane. We can argue about other stuff when we’ve got our country back.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) November 25, 2018
The senator must have missed the multiple videos showing the vast majority of migrants trying to break down the U.S. border fence and assaulting border agents were adult men, not women or children. Then again, he’s unfamiliar with the difference between pepper spray and mustard gas, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect him to know…well, much of anything, actually.