Jeb Bush's "America" Gun Tweet

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About

Jeb Bush's "America" Gun Tweet refers to a photograph of a personalized handgun engraved with the name Jeb Bush that was posted on Twitter by the Republican presidential candidate in mid-February 2016. Shortly after Bush tweeted the image, which was simply accompanied by the word "America," it quickly became a target of Murica-themed parodies and satires on the microblogging platform.

Origin

On February 16th, 2016, Jeb Bush's official Twitter account^[1] tweeted out a picture of Jeb Bush's monogrammed handgun, along with a one-word caption reading "America" (shown below). According to the news reports, Bush posted the photograph of his newly engraved .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol after conducting a business tour and town hall meeting at FN America, a firearms manufacturer based in Columbia, South Carolina and the U.S. subsidiary of the Belgian firearms corporation FN Herstal. Within the first 24 hours, the tweet received over 10,000 retweets and 7,000 likes from his supporters and followers on Twitter.

Spread

Throughout the afternoon, several celebrities and influential users on Twitter responded to Jeb Bush's tweet with satirical commentaries and parodies, with many people mocking it as an epic failure at social media campaigning while others condemned the former Florida governor for trying to rally up support and pander to pro-gun voters in poor taste.

Parodies

In addition to some of the more genuine commentaries aimed at the Republican presidential candidate's undisguised endorsement of the right to bear arms in the United States, Jeb Bush's "America" tweet also prompted dozens of satires and parodies featuring other controversial and negative stereotypes of the American culture under the one-word slogan "America."

News Media Coverage

Jeb Bush's "America" tweet and the social media backlash that ensued thereafter were picked up by virtually all major U.S. news outlets and viral media blogs, including CBS, CNN, TIME, USA Today, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, BuzzFeed and Mashable, as well as other English-language news outlets overseas, such as BBC News, The Telegraph, CBC, ABC Australia and The Daily Mail, among others.