On Sunday's AM Joy, Washington Post columnist and disaffected former Republican Jennifer Rubin joined in with MSNBC liberals Joy Reid and E.J. Dionne to trash the National Rifle Association and its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, as the group pushed for more gun control.
And for his part, Dionne ended up suggesting that congressional Republicans should remove metal detectors from the Capitol "if they're not going to protect the rest of us," leading to agreement from host Reid.
After a clip of LaPierre from an appearance on the same day's Face the Nation on CBS, in which he complained about Hollywood promoting the "irresponsible use of firearms," and accused critics of the NRA of being "hypocritical," Rubin declared that his statement was "offensive" as she bristled:
You know, they didn't discriminate in Las Vegas or anyplace else on the basis of income. Rich people died, poor people died, middle class people died -- that is just so offensive and unnecessary. Listen, no one -- "a good guy with a gun" -- that's always been the NRA's line. No good guy with a gun would have ended the episode in Las Vegas. The guy was 32 stories up and about a quarter of a mile away, I believe.
It did not occur to Rubin that, if there had been armed guards at the hotel to confront the gunman early on, they might have played a role in forcing him to react to them rather than continue his main attack. The allegedly right-leaning Rubin simply repeated the kinds of talking points liberals typically parrot to try to suggest guns are rarely useful for self-defense.
The frequent MSNBC guest continued her attack on the NRA:
So, listen, even the NRA accepts that you don't have the right to have an automatic, so what then is the constitutional limit that says, "But you absolutely are entitled to have a semi-automatic weapon"? This is all kind of made-up mumbo jumbo. This is the NRA -- you can't talk too soon about it, you can't talk too late about it -- you can't talk about a solution, as the Senator said, that doesn't stop this one.
Notably, several days ago, she and MSNBC's Chris Matthews talked up the possibility of banning semi-automatic rifles.
Back to Sunday, she further griped:
They create all of these ridiculous verbal defenses because they don't really want to talk about the fundamental issue, which is: Are we at a point where certain classes of weapons simply there's no reasonable, lawful use for them, and we really have to begin to question why people have them. Why does someone need 42 weapons?
But, keeping in mind that the Las Vegas mass shooting is still under investigation, if one examines the other most deadly mass shootings from the past 20 years -- Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Newtown, San Bernardino, and Orlando -- there was only one case in which a gunman actually fired shots from more than two guns during the rampage. The Aurora, Colorado theater gunman fired shots from three guns, although most were apparently fired from just one of the guns.
So the liberal preoccupation with someone owning 40 or 50 guns has nothing to do with how many are actually used in committing the crime.
Moments later, liberal MSNBC contributor E.J. Dionne went after Republicans and the NRA on the issue:
I think it's an outrageous thing he said. And if the elites who control Congress believe all the NRA propaganda they spout all the time, then take down the metal detectors that protect members of Congress, let people roam the Capitol with guns. The elites who are blocking gun control protect themselves every day, but they will not let the country protect itself with sensible gun laws. That is just outlandish what he said. Let him take down those protections they have if they're not going to protect the rest of us.
Reid agreed: "Yeah, indeed."
