The National Rifle Association and guns in general have taken a lot of media criticism in the wake of last weekend's murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend.
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre pushed back Thursday telling USA Today Sports, "The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer."
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has joined the list of his colleagues deciding to disgustingly politicize the tragic Colorado shooting. On Tuesday night, O’Donnell felt the need to attack Wayne LaPierre of the NRA and Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wis.) for their support of the Second Amendment.
O'Donnell started off his "Rewrite" segment claiming LaPierre was a "blood-drenched lobbyist" who is a "defender of mass murderers’ right to use hundred-round ammo clips." O’Donnell appeared shocked that Sen. Johnson believes a mass-murderer like James Holmes would still seek to obtain high-powered weapons regardless of stricter gun-control laws.
The Los Angeles Times has published an inane and irresponsible piece of political commentary about the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. This time it's cartoonist and columnist David Horsey, blaming the NRA for the bloodbath, both in writing and in a cartoon depicting a callous Wayne LaPierre quipping "I hope the guns weren't harmed."
Horsey writes:
Let's also consider the statistics that show deaths caused by guns, including suicides, are more common in regions of the country where gun laws are the most lax. Let's have a reasoned discussion that acknowledges the right to bear arms and also recognizes that every one of our liberties has a limit. Let's try to craft sensible gun regulations that promote public safety in circumstances we can predict, even if they cannot stop the unpredictable, random horror of a gunman who has slipped past the boundaries of civilized life.
Why do conservatives not want to have that discussion now? I'll tell you why: Because they have let the most extreme elements of the gun-rights community dictate gun policy for the entire country and now they are afraid to cross them. For conservatives, this is not the time for a discussion about guns because, no matter how much blood is spilled, even in preventable circumstances, it is a discussion they never plan to have.
I have a news bulletin for Horsey. Suicide isn't illegal. Taking your life with a gun doesn't make suicide any more tragic than by overdosing on pills, hanging yourself, or sticking your head in a gas oven. It's just that suicide-by-gun includes an implement that the left loves to hate.
While running through his usual litany of attacks on anti-Obama conservatives, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday included the National Rifle Association as part of the "crazy far-right" who "hate" Barack Obama.
Matthews began by wondering, "What is it about Obama that inspires this kind of weird, zealous hatred?" He later added, "Well, here's something, another strain of the crazy, far- right." After referencing birthers and other groups, the Hardball anchor played a clip of NRA President Wayne LaPierre deriding the President's stated support of the Second Amendment as a "big, fat lie."
On Monday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, correspondent James Rosen filed a report describing the line of obstacles to acquiring a handgun legally in Washington, D.C., in spite of last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning the city's outright ban on handgun possession in the city. Host Baier introduced the report: "Correspondent James Rosen reports while it is now legal to get a handgun in the nation's capital, it is definitely not easy."
Rosen went through the steps of obtaining a gun during the report, and ended up playing a clip of NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre as he summed up the process. LaPierre: "What D.C. is doing is throwing up every obstacle, shackling the freedom to the point where it's no longer really a freedom."
Below is a compete transcript of the report from the Monday, October 5, Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC: