Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES Calls Out Trump Administration in Wake of Texas Shooting

Lauren Mayberry, vocalist for Scottish synth-pop trio CHVRCHES, shared a video to her personal Twitter account today in which she addressed yesterday’s mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which saw an assault rifle-wielding gunman kill 26 churchgoers and injure at least 20. Mayberry recalls a similarly horrendous shooting that occurred in her hometown in Scotland—1996’s Dunblane Massacre—and the gun control measures taken in its aftermath.

“It’s confusing to me that some people—some politicians—are more keen to protect the Second Amendment and the interests of the gun lobby than to protect the people they’re supposed to be serving,” says Mayberry, who lives in the U.S. The singer goes on to criticize Donald Trump for declaring the Texas shooting “a mental health problem” (rather than “a guns situation”) even as his administration does its damnedest to roll back healthcare coverage and relax gun control laws. She also takes Mike Pence to task for trafficking only in thoughts and prayers while accepting thousands of dollars from the NRA.

“My thoughts and sadness and outrage are 100 percent with the people who lost loved ones yesterday, and in all these other horrific attacks,” says Mayberry. “But prayers are not what stopped more atrocities like Dunblane from happening in the United Kingdom. Gun control did.”

Watch Mayberry share her statement below, and further down, listen to a 2013 CHVRCHES session from the Paste Cloud.

#GunControl#GunControlNow#Dunblanepic.twitter.com/0ZBOaIlLZX

— Lauren Mayberry (@laurenevemay) November 6, 2017