By Trump logic, Republicans are 'complicit' in all murders committed with guns The government shutdown is over, but Trump's extreme rhetoric will live on. The peak was an ad blaming Democrats for murders committed by illegal immigrants.

Kurt Bardella | Opinion columnist

The shutdown showdown might be over, at least until Feb. 8, but we should not be quick to forget or excuse the extreme rhetoric used by President Trump during the tense standoff between Republicans and Democrats.

Trump's language peaked last weekend with an ad that said Democrats who oppose Trump's border wall "will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.” This wasn’t released by some group separate from Trump. It was from his campaign organization and concluded with the direct endorsement of the president of the United States: “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.”

If we are to accept Trump’s premise that anti-wall Democrats are responsible for every murder committed by illegal immigrants, then it must be equally true that every murder committed by a U.S. citizen with a legally obtained firearm can be blamed on Republicans who oppose tightening gun laws.

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“Great to see how hard Republicans are fighting for our Military and Safety at the Border. The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked," Trump tweeted amid the shutdown.

If he and his Republican accomplices are so concerned about the safety and security of American citizens, where is their outrage about guns? Where are their policies to curb gun violence in America?

In 2014, more than 11,000 people were killed with guns, according to the most recent federal statistics — and that’s on top of more than 21,000 suicides committed with firearms.

There were 427 mass shootings in the USA last year. They included the worst mass shooting in our history at a country music festival in Las Vegas, where 58 innocent Americans were murdered by Stephen Paddock — a white U.S. citizen. A school shooting in Kentucky just Tuesday claimed at least two lives and wounded more than a dozen.

But Republicans in Congress continue to send their “thoughts and prayers” while doing nothing else. And Trump, who is so concerned about keeping families safe, signed new laws that make it easier for mentally ill people to obtain a gun and for citizens to carry a concealed weapon across state lines.

Time and again, Trump and too many in the Republican Party choose to blatantly pander to the racist tendencies of the GOP base. It’s rhetorical cynicism at its absolute worst and most destructive. Only someone who has broken with reality could believe that protecting "dreamers," the undocumented young people brought here by their parents, will result in the mass murder of American citizens.

The implication that illegal immigrants are “bad hombres” who pose a danger to the safety and security of U.S. citizens is both a myth and blatantly racist. It is a flagrant betrayal of the American spirit that used to symbolize diversity, tolerance, acceptance and inclusiveness.

This destructively ignorant worldview championed by Trump is how he justified using the powers of the presidency to pardon an Arizona sheriff who made racial profiling of Hispanics standard operating procedure.

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It’s why in 2015, then-candidate Trump said on Fox News that Mexico was sending to America “people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. … They’re rapists.”

So why in the face of a government shutdown did Trump and many in his party change the conversation to safety and security?

The answer is as obvious as it is repulsive. To Trump and some of his fellow Republicans, “safety and security” are hollow words used to validate racist, extreme policies against people who do not look like them.

The fact is that since the 1990s, undocumented immigrants in this country have tripled while violent crime declined by almost 50%.

As The New York Times reported, “Analyses of Census data from 1980 through 2010 shows that among men ages 18 to 49, immigrants were one-half to one-fifth as likely to be incarcerated as those born in the United States."

The next time a mass shooting happens and Republicans try to silence the voices of sanity calling for gun-law reform, keep in mind that in today’s America, you are more likely to be murdered by someone who looks like you than by someone who doesn’t.

Kurt Bardella, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and a columnist for HuffPost, is a former spokesperson for Republican Reps. Brian Bilbray and Darrell Issa, Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee and Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter: @kurtbardella