Chris Matthews: 'Outlaw' Semi-Automatic Guns
I'm in New England this week, and this afternoon caught Ann Coulter on the Howie Carr show. She spoke of the amazing ignorance of liberals when it comes to firearms. Just a couple of hours later, Chris Matthews provided a perfect case in point.
On this evening's Hardball, speaking with Illinois Dem Senator Dick Durbin, Matthews proposed that Congress "outlaw" semi-automatic weapons. Does he not realize that doing so would render illegal virtually every hunting rifle in production? View the video after the jump.
In all seriousness, did Matthews not understand the implications of what he was saying, or was knowledge trumped by the blind desire to say something bold in light of the Newtown outrage?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It's not hopeless, though. You talk about the Second Amendment. Look, in 1934 we had Machine Gun Kelly and all the guys out in Chicago. We had the whole Prohibition era encouraging a certain kind of crime; rum-running, etc. Here's the question. Back then, Congress had the guts to outlaw automatic weapons, machine guns, basically they did. Heavily regulated. Heavily regulated. Almost to the point you don't find them around. Here's the question: why can't Congress do the same thing to semi-automatics? I know we've got millions of them, whatever. Can't we start to regulate? We don't have to regulate a shotgun or a regular pistol with a revolver or anything. But if you go into the semi-automatic level, why don't we say, that's like the automatic weapon. Just go for that. Courts would have to approve it. Cause they approved the earlier one, didn't they? Isn't there a precedent?
