The White House rebuked comments [House Speaker Rep. Mike] Johnson made to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night, a day after 18 people were killed in two mass shootings in Maine, in which Johnson said that guns are not the cause of America’s unique mass shooting crises.

Saying that it was “not the time” to talk about gun control, he told Hannity, “The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment, and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates issued a blistering response to the notion.

“We absolutely reject the offensive accusation that gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because of Americans’ ‘hearts,’” he said. “Gun crime is uniquely high in the United States because congressional Republicans have spent decades choosing the gun industry’s lobbyists over the lives of innocent Americans.”