In July 2021, readers asked Snopes to examine the authenticity of what appeared to be screenshots of a tweet posted by the controversial first-term Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado. In the purported tweet, Boebert appeared to have written:
Oh no! Another batch of murdered children! We need to AR-15s out of the hands of violent sociopaths!
Try and get this through your thick skulls, you freedom-hating Communist dirtbags: I would rather see every child in this country dead than pass any new gun laws.
Boebert is known as a fervent opponent of gun control proposals, but she never posted this tweet, and has not said "I would rather see every child in this country dead than pass any new gun laws." The screenshot shared online in July 2021 was no more than a fabrication, and we are issuing a rating of "False."
Boebert has two Twitter accounts — @LaurenBoebert and @RepBoebert. On July 9, neither of those accounts showed any record of any such tweet having been sent on or around July 6, as shown in the bogus screenshot. In principle, this could mean the tweet had been deleted, but not in this case.
Boebert's two Twitter accounts are among those covered by Politwoops, a project by the investigative nonprofit organization ProPublica, which systematically and comprehensively tracks tweets sent from the Twitter accounts of politicians and political candidates, before later being deleted.
If a tweet isn't available on a Twitter user's feed, and isn't listed on Politwoops, it can safely be deduced that it was never sent. Such was the case of the "dead children" tweet — Politwoops tracked no deleted tweets on or within one day of July 6, sent from Boebert's accounts, meaning no such tweet existed.