Marjorie Taylor Greene encouraged Alabama residents to greet vaccination promoters with guns

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Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd in Alabama to greet officials asking about vaccine status with guns.

Alabama has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.

Greene also lashed out against Dr. Fauci, falsely accusing him of funding COVID-19.

By Alia Shoaib and Yelena Dzhanova



Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene encouraged Alabama residents to use their guns to scare off officials if they came to their homes to ask about their vaccine status.

The Georgia politician made the comments while speaking to a crowd in Dothan, Alabama, on July 23.

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"You lucky people here in Alabama might get a knock on your door because I hear Alabama might be one of the most unvaccinated states in the nation," she said.

She warned them that Joe Biden would send his "police state friends" to their homes to ask about their vaccine status.

"He's going to be sending one of his police-state friends to your front door, to knock on the door, take down your name, your address, your family members' names, your phone numbers, your cellphone numbers, probably ask for your social security number, and whether you've taken the vaccine or not."

"What they don't know is that in the South, we love our Second Amendment rights and we're not real big on strangers showing up on our front door, are we?" she said, to raucous cheers from the crowd.

"They might not like the welcome they get."

The Biden administration, as well as health agencies nationwide, has encouraged Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus for months. But there are no known plans to have police officers crack down on unvaccinated individuals.

Alabama has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country and is one of just two states with less than 35% of the population fully vaccinated.

Alabama is the fifth worst state in terms of vaccination rate in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracks the 50 states and Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Just 44.7% of Alabama's total population has received at least one dose against the coronavirus.

Following Alabama are Louisiana with 44.1%, Wyoming with 42.3%, Idaho with 41.6%, and Mississippi dead last at 40.8%.

Alabama has recently seen a sharp rise in cases, and on Friday State Health Officer Scott Harris said that nearly all COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations in Alabama were among the unvaccinated.

Since the pandemic began, only 26 of the 11,600 people in Alabama who have died of COVID-19 were fully vaccinated, Harris said, and most of the nearly 2,000 COVID-19 patients currently in state hospitals are also unvaccinated.

Greene has previously come under fire for making controversial comments about COVID-19, including comparing vaccine passports and mask mandates to the Holocaust.

Greene then criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, who she said was a president that "no one elected."

She accused Dr. Fauci of orchestrating COVID-19 by funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, a false claim from the right that says he created the coronavirus.

"Dr. Tony Fauci funded, with your tax dollars, he funded it in the Wuhan lab, didn't he? He funded COVID-19," she said.

In May, Dr. Fauci said that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

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