In a blatant attempt to exploit the Santa Clarita school shooting the very next day, Friday’s NBC Nightly News conveniently queued up their ‘What Matters’ segment to push the Democratic Party’s desire to do away with gun rights in America. While the segment dealt with what mattered to Democratic voters it didn’t deal with the facts that mattered.
“Just a day after another deadly school shooting, tonight we are talking to one of the 2020 candidates about something that Democratic voters told us is important to them: gun control,” anchor Lester Holt announced, clearly flaunting the fact they were exploiting the victims. “Senator Kamala Harris tells NBC’s Harry Smith how she'd tighten gun laws as part of our series ‘What Matters.’”
The first rejection of the facts came in terms of the weapons they were targeting for elimination. The shooter in the latest incident, the one Holt cited, committed the crime using a pistol. Yet, their report obsessed with taking away widely popular sporting rifles like the AR-15 and others like it.
To tee up Senator Harris’s unconstitutional push for gun bans and confiscations, correspondent Harry Smith played this soundbite of Democratic voter and Air Force veteran Ron Schueler: “Would you support moving assault rifles into a class-3 weapon category which requires a more enhanced background check and greater hurdles to overcome to own those?”
What Smith failed or refused to reveal to viewers was that in order for an American citizen to obtain a class-3 weapons permit, they essentially had to give up their Fourth Amendment protections to unreasonable searches and seizures to the ATF. On Top of that, they were speaking to a California Senator about a shooting that happened in her state; a state that had already implemented nearly every liberal gun control policy conceivable. They didn’t stop the shooter.
“Harris agrees. She wants universal background checks and a renewal of the assault weapons ban. She also supports a mandatory gun buyback,” Smith boasted. So much deception in those two sentences.
First of all, the U.S. already tried an assault weapons ban and there was no discernible reduction in crime committed with them. That, and the fact that so-called assault rifles only counted for a minute fraction of all gun deaths in America.
Then, Smith rhetorically walked out into a field and set up a strawman for Harris to knock over when it came to her so-called “mandatory buyback” program:
SMITH: So, say you have a couple hundred thousand off the streets, I mean, isn't that just a drop in the bucket?
HARRIS: Well, what we'll do is have an incentive for people to turn them in and buy them back. But when we're talking about weapons of war, I mean, it literally is this simple. 5 million assault weapons on the streets of America, period.
There was no such thing as a “mandatory buyback.” The correct term is confiscation. The liberal media has obfuscated that fact because it exposed what their true goal was: they want to take your guns away.
“And if Congress won't act, Harris says as president she'll take executive action,” Smith proclaimed in conclusion, with no question to the unconstitutional nature of gun confiscation through executive order.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
NBC Nightly News
November 15, 2019
7:12:16 p.m. EasternLESTER HOLT: Just a day after another deadly school shooting, tonight we are talking to one of the 2020 candidates about something that Democratic voters told us is important to them -- gun control. Senator Kamala Harris tells NBC’s Harry Smith how she'd tighten gun laws as part of our series "What Matters."
[Cuts to video]
HARRY SMITH: At our gathering of Democratic voters, Ron Schueler is an Air Force veteran and retired police officer. We showed Senator Kamala Harris what matters to him.
RON SCHUELER: Would you support moving assault rifles into a class-3 weapon category which requires a more enhanced background check and greater hurdles to overcome to own those?
SMITH: What did you think of what Ron had to say?
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: I get it. I get it. What he is saying is that, you know, reject the false choice. Which suggests you're either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone's guns away. It's a false choice. There are certain types of weapons that should not be on the streets of a civil society.
SMITH: Harris agrees. She wants universal background checks and a renewal of the assault weapons ban. She also supports a mandatory gun buyback.
So, say you have a couple hundred thousand off the streets, I mean, isn't that just a drop in the bucket?
HARRIS: Well, what we'll do is have an incentive for people to turn them in and buy them back. But when we're talking about weapons of war, I mean, it literally is this simple. 5 million assault weapons on the streets of America, period.
SMITH: And if Congress won't act, Harris says as president she'll take executive action. Harry Smith, NBC News, New York.
