In the midst of Saturday’s so-called March for Our Lives gun control rally, MSNBC host Chris Matthews appeared with disgraced anchor Brian Williams to lecture gun-owning Americans about why they should expect to have “basic” restrictions applied to their right to keep and bear arms.
Williams came back from a long viewing of the march’s festivities to have Matthews reflect on what he saw from the gun control pushing kids. After Williams questionably suggesting his guest was “smarter than the rest of us,” Matthews surmised that “these young people are very much like the anti-Vietnam War protesters in the late '60s. It's the beginning of a protest.”
“When in your lifetime-- in our lifetime did the Second Amendment start taking on a different meaning than when we were kids,” Williams continued, as if it ever had any other meaning. “It began with the fear that guns would be registered like cars,” Matthews recalled.
According to Matthews, your right to lawfully keep and bear arms needed to be curtailed because it opposed everyone else’s right to life. “The question is when does your freedom go up against someone's basic safety? That's what the government a few blocks away has to decide. Where does one person's right trespass on someone else's more basic right, which is life,” Matthews argued. He seemed oblivious to all the gun laws already on the books, even the radical leftist ones that have done nothing to put a dent in gun crime.
Williams compared liberal gun control and gun grabbing measures to requirements like wearing a seatbelt when you drive. “Click it or ticket. We get used to it, not to say we like it. But we do accept it,” Matthews agreed. “We accept speed limits. People don't drive like the autobahn, they don’t go 100 miles an hour. Generally, you go only five miles over the speed limit. People know the rules.”
Matthews then suggested that even in the days of the wild west people respected their crude gun control laws: “I think we did know from the old west we did know you check your .45 at the city limits. You don't go into a saloon with both guns loaded.” “There are certain normal American restrictions,” he added.
One of the more bizarre aspects of their conversation was their notion that the meaning of the Second Amendment had been changed during their lifetimes. While they seem to suggest it got a radical new interpretation throughout the years, Matthews did admit it was included in the Bill of Rights because of British oppression:
Then they'll come and get them, once they have the list, they'll come and get it. On the one hand, it's a fairly legitimate American concern about the rise of too much government. It goes back to the British colonization of this country. And people don't like big government, don't like being told what to do. They want to be able to get on their motorcycle without a helmet. They want to be able to smoke. They want to buy big drinks of soda. They like freedom.
For all their pontificating about where the right to own a gun stacks up to the right to life, the skipped over the crucial facture: the shooter. One’s right to own a gun doesn’t interfere with one’s right to life, what interferes is the shooter. That person is the problem, not the inanimate object.
Transcript below, click expand to read:
MSNBC
March for Our Lives
March 24, 2018
1:30:39 PM EasternBRIAN WILLIAMS: Another incredible speech by another incredible student. Chris Matthews, you're smarter than the rest of us. What is happening here?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, I hope these mostly young people know this, the beginning of a fight, not the end. We've learned through our history that protests work over time, as they grow in numbers and persistence. They're up against a very professional force and a very strong membership, the National Rifle Associations, citizens like them with a different view, who are relentless and enduring. I think these young people are very much like the anti-Vietnam War protesters in the late '60s. It's the beginning of a protest.
WILLIAMS: When in your lifetime, in our lifetime did the Second Amendment start taking on a different meaning than when we were kids?
MATTHEWS: It began with the fear that guns would be registered like cars.
WILLIAMS: They're coming for your guns.
MATTHEWS: Then they'll come and get them, once they have the list, they'll come and get it. On the one hand, it's a fairly legitimate American concern about the rise of too much government. It goes back to the British colonization of this country. And people don't like big government, don't like being told what to do. They want to be able to get on their motorcycle without a helmet. They want to be able to smoke. They want to buy big drinks of soda. They like freedom.
The question is when does your freedom go up against someone's basic safety? That's what the government a few blocks away has to decide. Where does one person's right trespass on someone else's more basic right, which is life?
WILLIAMS: Government is in your lives, you can't get in your car without getting yelled at to put your seatbelt on. It’s in every facet of our lives.
MATTHEWS: Click it or ticket. We get used to it, not to say we like it. But we do accept it. We accept speed limits. People don't drive like the autobahn, they don’t go 100 miles an hour. Generally, you go only five miles over the speed limit. People know the rules.
I think we did know from the old west we did know you check your .45 at the city limits. You don't go into a saloon with both guns loaded. There are certain normal American restrictions. I think the Supreme Court, though, in the end, makes these decisions. And as it goes from 5-4 in one direction with the Heller decision, which is pretty much a very basic idea, you have the right to own guns, very basic, to the more limited notion that it has something to do with militias and more restrictions. I think we'll be going back and forth on that in the years ahead.
(…)
