In response to a teacher getting shot by a 6-year-old in a Virginia school, where officials blatantly ignored multiple warnings that the kid had a gun that day, ABC co-host Joy Behar lashed out at law-abiding gun owners and other gun rights activists via The View on Thursday. She accused those millions of Americans of having a “mental illness” and demanded they “be stopped immediately.”
“We need to grow up,” Behar sneered at America while dubiously asserting that “[w]e're between Venezuela and Brazil with the most mass shootings.” “There were 40 mass shooting it in the first 24 days of this year,” she falsely proclaimed, parroting a statistic from Gun Violence Archive that NewsBusters has debunked multiple times.
Clearly referring to private gun ownership and support for Second Amendment rights, Behar argued: “There’s like a mental illness going on in the country that has to be stopped immediately.” She went on to suggest that President Biden’s efforts to stop them were being thwarted by “people who are getting money from the gun lobby and who want to keep [mass shootings] going. It's disgraceful.”
What ABC News and The View didn’t want viewers to know was that an expansive Georgetown University study of guns in America conducted last year, found “that guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year.”
After giving a weak endorsement of gun rights, self-described conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin noted that “98 percent of mass shootings in this country are young men … between adolescence and young adulthood” and share signs of actual mental illness. “[T]here is a mental health component and there is a crisis of young men in this country that we don't know how to address and I don't think we're talking about it enough,” she implored them to take into account.
Behar scoffed at the facts. “They have mentally ill people in the European Union, don't they? So, the one thing they don't have is access to guns. So, this mental health idea is baloney. It’s baloney,” she flailed. “I don't think it is baloney though. Because again, I can own a gun my whole life and never use it to commit a crime,” Farah Griffin pushed back.
There was a cacophony of crosstalk and co-host Sunny Hostin shrieked that “[p]eople with mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than attacking other people.” It’s been a common argument she’s deployed in an attempt to try to sever the connection between mass shooters and mental illness.
Of course, that stat might be true, but when we slice things down to look at who’s committing mass shootings (not those improperly counted by Gun Violence Archive) there is a spectrum of mental illness.
Interestingly, Sara Haines noted other societal problems that could lead a troubled young man to commit a mass shooting and came off sounding a bit like a conservative again:
You also can’t separate the problem with pornography, and video games, and the disconnection between young people, and a lack of empathy, and racism, and you name it all. It is layered beyond belief and it's not as simple as, “we got tons of guns, get rid of them.” Some people have them illegally. Some people have them legally.
Behar was made to read a fact-check of her dubious comparison of the U.S. to Venezuela and Brazil. After a commercial break, Behar read from her phone that the U.S. is “between Brazil and Venezuela for highest total gun deaths, not specifically mass shootings.”
Again, her statistic was misleading. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of gun deaths in America are suicides (often the result of mental illness), not homicides. That number has reached upwards of two-thirds of gun deaths.
Joy Behar’s contempt for law-abiding gun owners was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from CarShield and Olay. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
ABC’s The View
January 26, 2023
11:04:44 a.m. Eastern(…)
JOY BEHAR: The beauty of this story is that the right-wing of this country would have us believe it has nothing to do with the guns, and that the solution to these type of shootings is to arm the teachers. So now, the teacher has a gun. Was she supposed to shoot the kid? What would have happened if she had a gun? Who was, is she supposed to shoot? They also say that a good guy with a gun is a good solution to this. Well, there were good guys in Uvalde and they were too scared to go in against an AR-15, so that didn't work.
[Applause]
So now, I would just like to say that this country needs to get -- grow up. We need to grow up. We're the only civilized -- well, not civilized, but I guess democratic country in the world that has this problem. We're between Venezuela and Brazil with the most mass shootings. We’ve had, like -- what was the stat? Like 29 -- there were 40 mass shooting it in the first 24 days of this year.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Yeah. Yeah.
BEHAR: It's like – There’s like a mental illness going on in the country that has to be stopped immediately. And I believe that Joe Biden is trying to do something, but it runs up against these people who are getting money from the gun lobby and who want to keep that going. It's disgraceful.
[Applause]
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I just want to say I fundamentally disagree that arming teachers is the solution. Their job is to educate, not to be the protector.
SARA HAINES: And we already don't pay enough.
FARAH GRIFFIN: We don't pay them enough.
This case is a bit of an outlier in that it's clearly a very young, disturbed kid. But across the board, 98 percent of mass shootings in this country are young men of a certain age. So, between adolescence and young adulthood. Guns are a huge factor. You cannot commit the crime without the gun. But there is a mental health component and there is a crisis of young men in this country that we don't know how to address and I don't think we're talking about it enough. Women are not committing these crimes by and large.
(…)
11:10:32 a.m. Eastern
BEHAR: They have mentally ill people in the European Union, don't they?
SUNNY HOSTIN: Sure, they do.
BEHAR: So, the one thing they don't have is access to guns. So, this mental health idea is baloney. It’s baloney.
FARAH GRIFFIN: I don't think it is baloney though. Because again, I can own a gun my whole life and never use it to commit a crime. You can't separate the criminal from the weapon –
HAINES (interrupting) You also can't –
[Crosstalk]
FARAH GRIFFIN: I do think there’s an over prevalence. There's 400 million guns.
HOSTIN: People with mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than attacking other people.
[Crosstalk]
HAINES: I know. I know. You also can’t separate the problem with pornography, and video games, and the disconnection between young people, and a lack of empathy, and racism, and you name it all. It is layered beyond belief and it's not as simple as, “we got tons of guns, get rid of them.” Some people have them illegally. Some people have them legally.
(…)
11:16:47 a.m. Eastern
BEHAR: Well, here, I just want to correct one thing before the fact checkers go bananas on me. We're between Brazil and Venezuela for highest total gun deaths, not specifically mass shootings. It's a small thing, but it’s – [trails off]
(…)
