U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn over the weekend declined to comment on the growing political firestorm over Friday’s shooting that killed three and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in his hometown.

Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican who has represented the 5th Congressional District since 2007, on Friday called for prayers for the family and friends of slain University of Colorado-Colorado Springs police officer Garrett Swasey. And on Sunday he offered condolences to the friends and family of the other two victims, Jennifer Markovsky and Ke’Arre Stewart, reportedly an Iraq War veteran in a Facebook post.

That post prompted comments suggesting the congressman start calling the attack an act of domestic terrorism and criticizing what commenters called his “extreme rhetoric” in opposition to Planned Parenthood. Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, a former Colorado attorney general, told ABC News on Sunday the attack appears to be domestic terrorism.

Through a spokesman on Saturday, Lamborn, who has repeatedly called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood in the wake of controversial videos released over the summer, declined to address the issue. Lamborn acknowledge the political ramifications of the attack on Friday.

“As speculation swirls about a possible motive in today’s shooting, we must remember that senseless violence should never be used to settle differences of conscience or political opinion,” Lamborn posted on his Facebook page Friday.

Shooter Robert Lewis Dear, according to anonymous police sources, said “no more baby parts” after his arrest, according to the Associated Press and NBC News. That could be a reference to the videos critics say show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of fetal tissue.

Through a spokesman, Lamborn declined to address initials comments from Planned Parenthood in the Rocky Mountains CEO Vicki Cowart decrying extremists who are “creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country” or President Barack Obama on Saturday calling for tighter gun control laws in the wake of the latest American mass shooting.

In a Sept. 29 statement backing a bill to give states more flexibility allocating Medicaid funding to organizations that provide abortion services, Lamborn said, “the brave whistleblower videos from this past summer have opened the eyes of a nation to atrocities being committed against the unborn.”

DNC Chair U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday issued a release calling the attack an act of terrorism prompted by the politically motivated, misleading and debunked video campaign.

“Those running for president and those of us in leadership roles in our country’s major political parties have an obligation to denounce these attacks and clearly say that violence and intimidation in the pursuit of ideology are not acceptable in America,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“Today and every day, we ?#?StandWithPP??,” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton posted on social media Friday, promoting a hashtag supporting Planned Parenthood, but GOP president candidates were slow to address the attack. Obama on Saturday decried the “easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.”

In an early November phone interview with The Colorado Statesman, Lamborn acknowledged the sad irony of Iraq War veteran Andrew Myers, who survived three deployments, being shot and killed in a Halloween weekend mass shooting that left three dead near downtown Colorado Springs. But he also took issue with Democrats politicizing such shootings.

“The rhetoric from the Democrats shows that they’re drifting further and further to the left, and that’s going to hurt Hillary Clinton in the general election,” Lamborn told The Statesman, adding the common denominator in most mass shootings seems to be mental instability.

“I still don’t have all the facts behind this person’s motivation and prior history [in the Halloween shooting], but I do think mental health is a big problem in this country because that seems to be the basis of a lot of these mass shootings,” Lamborn said earlier this month.

– davido@realvail.com

Photo by John Tomasic/The Colorado Statesman