Right wing news host appears to object that shooting a homeless person means you ‘end up in jail’

Stephanie Hamill , an anchor for the One America News Network, has raised eyebrows after she blamed California gun control laws for preventing people from shooting homeless people “running loose on the streets”.

“You’ll probably end up in jail” if you “protect yourself” Hamill complained during the segment aired on Monday in an episode of In Focus with Stephanie Hamill on the network.

During her conversation with Republican representative Pat Fallon , Hamill referred to a CNN report which said that the US saw a significant rise in crime across major cities in the country.

Blaming Democrats for the increase in crime, Mr Fallon said it was the responsibility of the elected officials to keep the electorate safe. “Because if you are not safe, then you are not free,” said the congressman.

Talking about the story of a 64-year-old woman who was recently stabbed to death as she walked her dogs in a Riverside in California, Hamill said: “We see homeless people running loose on the streets here and no one’s holding them accountable. We’re all sitting ducks here and, by the way, the gun laws are really strict. And you think about if you can protect yourself, you’ll probably end up in jail.”

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“And just because somebody is homeless, we have sympathy for them,” said Mr Fallon, “that does not necessarily mean they are righteous either.”

The CNN report published on 3 April said that it is difficult to attribute the rise in crime to a single factor, pointing instead to a perfect storm arising out of “economic collapse, social anxiety because of a pandemic, de-policing in major cities after protests called for the abolition of police departments, shifts in police resources from neighbourhoods to downtown areas because of those protests, and the release of criminal defendants pretrial or before sentences were completed to reduce risk of Covid-19 spread in jails”.