MS NOW's Morning Joe Boosts Author Claiming 2nd Amendment Was for Slave Patrols

On Wednesday's Morning Joe show, co-host Joe Scarborough gave no pushback to liberal author Malcolm Gladwell claiming that the Second Amendment was meant to apply to slave patrols as he complained about the U.S. Supreme Court making gun control more difficult to enact.

The comments came during a discussion of Gladwell's latest book, The American Way of Killing, which focuses on gun-related violence. After the first part of the discussion pointed out that European countries have substantially more police officers to help focus on crime compared to the U.S., MS NOW contributor Mike Barnicle followed up by comparing guns to a disease:

What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it's threatening and it's killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS ... we react ... we find a cure almost immediately? People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades -- decades. And there's nothing we can do.

Gladwell ripped the Supreme Court over prominent rulings that have supported gun rights -- even the Heller case which guarantees that Americans have a right to be armed in their homes: "Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have -- the last two major gun rulings -- in the Bruen case and the Heller case -- are abominations."

He continued:

I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously. And the -- and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes -- no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's commas everywhere.

There's this weird initial what's called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, "Okay, here's how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause. -- here's how James Madison used that clause. Here's what James Madison meant."

The liberal author then linked the Second Amendment to "slave patrols" as he concluded:

What he meant was, we're talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest. And when you have a court that pretends to be deeply interested in the historical foundations of the Constitution, and then when the time comes to actually test that interest shows no interest, you have a problem.

Scarborough gave no pushback and merely followed up by asking why there is such a difference between violent crime in Chicago and New York City.

Transcript follows:

MS NOW's Morning Joe

September 30, 2026

8:45 a.m. Eastern

JOE SCARBOROUGH: How much of this is something that is hardwired in Americans? And how much of this is a failure of our political systems? When post-Sandy Hook you have 90 percent of Americans supporting universal background checks, you've got 80 percent of Americans supporting red flag laws, you have anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of Americans supporting a ban on so-called assault weapons, it seems to me the American people have -- have moved to the center on guns, but the politicians have stayed basically hard right?

MALCOLM GLADWELL, AUTHOR: I think that there is a large part of this. This goes to the dishonesty question. We're not having the kind of conversation we should be having. One would have thought that Sandy Hook would have been a turning point --

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

GLADWELL: -- in our attitude, and it just wasn't.

(...)

MIKE BARNICLE, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it's threatening and it's killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS, we -- we react, we find -- we find a cure almost immediately. People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades -- decades. And there's nothing we can do.

GLADWELL: Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have -- the last two major gun rulings -- in the Bruen case and the Heller case -- are abominations. And I had -- I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously.

And the -- and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes -- no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's commas everywhere. There's this weird initial what's called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, "Okay, here's how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause -- here's how James Madison used that clause. Here's what James Madison meant." What he meant was, we're talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest.

And when you have a court that pretends to be deeply interested in the historical foundations of the Constitution, and then when the time comes to actually test that interest shows no interest, you have a problem.