On Wednesday's New Day show, CNN hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota pined for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call a special session to pass more restrictive gun laws at the same time the two ignored the news that the gun used to kill California police officer Andre Moye was illegally owned by a convicted felon.
As the CNN hosts conducted a panel discusson on the subject near the beginning of each of the show's three hours, no conservative contributors were included in any of the three segments which included liberals like CNN analysts April Ryan, Angela Rye, Joe Lockhart, and John Avlon.
Shortly after 6:00 a.m. Eastern, co-host Berman played a clip of President Donald Trump discussing the possibility of the Senate passing a bill on more background checks, and then fretted that the statement was just "word salad" on the part of the President, as it was noted the President has a history of talking up the possiblity of more gun control but then backing off.
Ryan blamed the NRA for the President's history of refusing to back new gun laws:
When it was Parkland, we heard the same thing about background checks, but the NRA stepped in and said, 'No, no, no.' The NRA has the President, they've got the Republicans in the Senate, and the Republicans in the House, so nothing's going to happen.
After Rye likened the NRA to Goliath who has a "death hold" on Republicans in Congress, co-host Camerota suggested that voters who support more gun control should become single-issue voters on the subject:
People feel helpless -- they feel like they're sending their kids to school as sitting ducks, and they think, 'Well, that's just the price of admission in America -- I guess we just accept this as our new normal.' But of course you can actually vote for people who feel strongly about this. This can be your single issue.
In the next hour, for a change, Lockhart admitted that background checks would likely not have much impact as he and Berman lamented that there will likely not be support for banning so-called "assault weapons."
Moments later, contributor Bianna Golodryga similarly admitted that red flag laws would probably not have much impact on mass shootings. CNN analyst David Gregory suggested that it is necessary for Democrats to "chip away" at the "paranoia" felt by gun rights supporters who fear universal background checks will lead to a gun registry.
Co-host Berman then repeated the misleading claim that 90 percent of Americans support what Democrats often refer to as "universal background checks" which would require background checks for private gun purchases as the CNN host responded: "It's a 90 percent issue. Expanded background checks in a 90 percent issue in the United States -- 90 percent of Americans support it."
At 8:39 a.m., during an interview with gun control activist and Dayton shooting survivor Christina Huelsman, Camerota invited her to attack McConnell for not calling a special session to push gun control:
The Senate is on recess this month, and Mitch McConnell has basically implied that they're not going to come back -- this isn't an emergency that needs attending this month while they're on recess. And maybe they'll take it up when they get back, but maybe not. And so I'm just wondering what your message is to him and to the Republicans in the Senate?
After Huelsman complained that not holding a special session is "failing our country," and the interview concluded, Berman jumped in: "You can understand why she's restless and impatient for change -- that waiting a month doesn't seem like a good idea."
Camerota agreed: "If Senator McConnell is at home watching the morning news this morning, I hope that he hears Christina's plea."
Never did it seem to enter anyone's thinking that increasing gun rights by expanding the number of places where concealed carry is allowed might do more than anything to help cut down on the death toll from mass shootings, and deter some of them.
And, even though the show on the previous day had covered the killing of California officer Moye, they did not update viewers with the significant finding that the killer had a criminal record and was supposed to be barred from getting a gun, meaning he had it illegally and therefore got around existing gun laws.
Fox and Friends as well as the evening news casts on ABC and CBS did cover this angle of the story.
