US congressman condemned for posting Christmas photo with several guns

A US congressman on Saturday posted a Christmas picture of himself and what appeared to be his family smiling and posing with an assortment of guns, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a Michigan high school.

"Merry Christmas! ps Santa, please bring ammo," US representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky wrote in the post on Twitter.

Ethan Crumbley (15) on Tuesday allegedly carried out the deadliest US school shooting this year, the latest in a decades-long series of mass shootings at US schools. His parents were arrested on Saturday in connection with the killings and have been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

In the picture posted by Mr Massie, who represents a solidly Republican district, the representative and six others hold firearms resembling an M60 machine gun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Thompson submachine gun.

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Some semi-automatic weapons are made to look nearly identical to fully automatic weapons like machine guns. Under US law, weapons like machine guns are restricted to the military, law enforcement and civilians who have obtained special licences for weapons made before May 1986.

Jonathan van Norman, a campaign manager for Mr Massie, did not immediately reply to a request for comment via Twitter.

Democratic US representative John Yarmuth, who chairs the US House of Representatives Budget Committee, condemned his fellow Kentuckian's post.

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Mr Yarmuth wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to responses to calls for gun control laws.

“I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole,” he added. The shooting in Oxford, Michigan, resulted in the deaths of four teenagers and the wounding of a teacher and six other students. – Reuters