“I believe I have the right to air it,” creator Ryan Murphy said.
The upcoming episode of FX's politically-charged show American Horror Story: Cult, titled "Mid-Western Assassin," opens with a mass shooting at a rally.
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And considering the episode will be airing on Tuesday, Oct. 10, just over a week after the Las Vegas shooting resulted in the deaths of 58 people, some have questioned whether or not the episode should air.
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FX has declined to comment on the episode, but during a New Yorker Festival interview on Saturday, AHS creator Ryan Murphy told Emily Nussbaum that the upcoming episode has been re-edited to be less graphic.
The scene, which Murphy said was filmed months before the Las Vegas shooting, was meant to be "an obvious anti-gun warning about society."
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Murphy said he didn't want anyone to be potentially triggered by the scene. "I believe I have the right to air it," Murphy said. "But I also believe in victims’ rights and I believe that now is not the week to have something explosive or incendiary in the culture."
BuzzFeed News has reached out to FX to see if the episode will air with a trigger warning.
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AHS: Cult's storyline kicked off on the evening of the 2016 election and has followed a Donald Trump supporter named Kai (Evan Peters) who quickly amasses a large, homicidal following.
FX
This won't be the first time the franchise has portrayed a mass shooting: In American Horror Story's debut season, Tate (also played by Peters) shoots and kills some of his classmates in an episode inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting.
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