KENTUCKY — Rep. Thomas Massie was trending on Twitter this weekend after posting a Christmas photo of himself and his family members, each holding firearms around a Christmas tree.

"Merry Christmas!" Massie wrote in the Saturday tweet. "Santa, please bring ammo."

The Northern Kentucky Republican's provocative tweet garnered over 70,000 likes and almost 80,000 replies as of Sunday afternoon in what some would call a "ratio."

It drew ire and backlash from both political parties, with some deriding it as "gun fetishism" and others calling it disrespectful to vicitims of the recent school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan where four teenagers were killed.

One of the first to fire back was fellow Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth, the Commonwealth's lone Democrat in Congress. In a tweet, he said, "I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a——e."

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth added. “Now they openly rub the murder of children in our faces like they scored a touchdown. Disgraceful.”

Rep Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, also chimed in to denounce the tweet.

“I’m pro second amendment, but this isn’t supporting right to keep and bear arms, this is a gun fetish,” he tweeted Saturday.

In a statement on Saturday, Tom Elfers, the chairman of the Kenton County Democrats, called Massie's tweet “morally reprehensible," adding that it "makes a mockery of victims of gun violence across this country and here in the commonwealth.”

Massie has long been a staunch advocate for gun ownership. He's voted against expanded background checks several times, and notably voted against the 2018 Stop School Violence Act. 

Many replies to Massie's tweet this weekend contained photos of the Oxford High School victims, where a 15-year-old gunman killed four and injured others with a handgun given to him by his parents.

As the backlash piled on, Massie retweeted a handful of commentators defending him, including conservative Candace Owens. 

“Can somebody explain to me how they worked out that the Michigan school shooting is (Massie’s) fault because he shared a picture of him and his family holding legal fire arms?” Owens asked in the tweet.

It should be noted that most critics of the tweet – including Yarmuth, Kinzinger and Elfers – never claimed the shooting was Massie's fault.

Another critic was Anthony Scaramucci, the short-lived White House communications director under former President Trump.

“If you are running against this a——e please contact me I will give you dough,” Scaramucci tweeted, which Massie eventually retweeted.

Massie is running for re-election in 2022 for the solidly-Republican 4th district of Kentucky.