On Tuesday’s Hardball, lefty MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews refused to correct Democratic Governor Jay Inslee (Wash.) on his absurd claim that the National Rifle Association (NRA) wants first graders to be armed with guns. Not only that, but the host debased the gun rights group's millions of members and civil discourse by comparing anyone who defies the NRA to assassinated leaders Anwar Sadat of Egypt or Yitzhak Rabin from Israel.
Matthews responded to Inslee touting his vote as a member of Congress in the 1990s for the ineffective assault weapons ban by interjecting with his dangerous and unfunny comparison.
“It’s almost like the Middle East — it's almost like the Middle East if you sign a treaty and you're Anwar Sadat or Yitzhak Rabin, you do the right thing you get killed. You lost on this. Tom Foley lost on the issue,” Matthews claimed.
He also took a swipe at Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wisc.), arguing that he’s “always sold to me” (presumably he meant to the NRA) and “never bought that Paul Ryan argument that he's so great” as exhibited by his unwillingness to support the left’s anti-gun agenda.
Inslee ran through the gauntlet of current proposals to ban bump stocks, increase the age to buy certain types of guns to 21 years old, and ideas such as seizing firearms from those having protective orders being levied against them.
To fully satisfy his constituency and liberal interest groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, Inslee suggested that Republicans don’t genuinely support gun rights but instead have become “a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA and we need presidential leadership and unfortunately, we're not getting it.”
What came next was the claim that, along with arming “a million teachers” to distract them from teaching, gun rights supporters have “absurd ideas that what we want is our first-graders to have a Glock on their hip.”
Just like CNN’s refusal to correct falsehoods or immature rhetoric by Parkland students, Matthews did nothing to correct Inslee’s asinine claim. Inslee failed to provide any evidence that the NRA and their supporters wanted first-graders armed and ignored how the NRA and leaders such as Cam Edwards, Dana Loesch, and Grant Stinchfield cared deeply about securing their firearms.
In addition to their litany of safety courses, the NRA’s Eddie Eagle cartoon program seeks to inform children about the danger of guns, why they’re not toys, and what to do when they come across a firearm. But those sorts of programs will never see the light of day in the liberal media. Those safety programs don’t fit the narrative from CNN or MSNBC that the NRA only cares about gun sales or political donations.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on February 27, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
February 27, 2018
7:36 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It’s almost like the Middle East — it's almost like the Middle East if you sign a treaty and you're Anwar Sadat or Yitzhak Rabin, you do the right thing you get killed. You lost on this. Tom Foley lost on the issue and you watch Ryan who is always sold to me. I have never bought that Paul Ryan argument that he's so great. He went out there today and said I'm not going to do anything on gun control. I’m not touching the weapons. He just said it.
DEMOCRATIC WASHINGTON GOVERNOR JAY INSLEE: It's very disappointing when you have overwhelming majorities of Americans. There is no possible argument why Congress should not ban bump stocks and we're doing that. I’ll sign a bill to do that shortly.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
INSLEE: There is no reason you can't buy a pistol till you're 21 but you can go out and buy an assault weapon, then buy a bump stock and turn it into a fully automatic weapon. There's absolutely no logic for that. There is no reason that the country doesn't have what we have in our state of an extreme risk protection order that allows family members to take a firearm out of the homes with the assistance of law enforcement after a court hearing of a person who is endangering themselves or potentially endangering others. Now, these are all common sense. The American people red blue areas, urban and rural, hunters and people who don't own firearms all agree on that. But the fact of the matter is we have the Republican Party which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA and we need presidential leadership. And unfortunately, we're not getting it. We're getting absurd ideas that what we want is our first graders to have a Glock on their hip. Now, you think how ridiculous that is and what the President talked about. He wanted 20 percent of the 5 million educators to be carrying around weapons in the schools. That's a million teachers. We don't need a million teaches to be distracted from their educational duties. So I think it's important to listen to the people in our country who would be affected by this. I've done that. Up and down the spectrum and that's a bad idea. We should put common sense to work for us here.
