Gun Control

Hayes and 'All In' Panel Hype Racism While Ignoring Evidence to the Contrary
By Nathan Roush | July 17, 2013 | 4:40 PM EDT

On the Monday night edition of All In, Chris Hayes featured a segment decrying what he considered a racially-motivated overzealous prosecution of Marissa Alexander, an African-American Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot in the vicinity of her estranged husband, with whom she was having a dispute. [Link to the audio here]

Hayes hosted a panel which included Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) to discuss the story, and its implications when compared against the outcome of the Zimmerman case. Rep. Brown passionately exclaimed that this case showed “institutional racism” in the justice system. Hayes and the panel agreed with Brown about her opinion that Alexander had been overcharged for her crime and called into question the legitimacy of “mandatory minimum” laws, which require a preset minimum sentence if convicted of certain crimes. But according to an Associated Press report, the story is a lot more complex than that. 

MSNBC's Harris-Perry: 'We Want to Politicize' Newtown, Calls for Parents to Release Photos of Victims
By Andrew Lautz | June 12, 2013 | 12:54 PM EDT

Governor Dan Malloy (D-Conn.) recently signed a bill preventing photos and videos of the Sandy Hook shooting victims from being released to the public. The bill had broad support from the victims’s families, and was the subject of a petition on change.org that gained over 100,000 signatures.

But MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry and her Sunday panel’s desire for gun control apparently trumps the concerns of these Newtown parents. Harris-Perry and all but one of her guests called on the parents to “break” the “evil of government” and release the photographs of their slain children to the public. Harris-Perry had spent part of her opening monologue decrying the politicization of photographs by “rabid anti-choice demonstrators” in the pro-life movement. But then Harris-Perry did just that with the December tragedy, asking:

Chris Matthews: Support Gun Control or an American President Could Be Murdered
By Scott Whitlock | February 27, 2013 | 6:25 PM EST

In a closing commentary on Wednesday, Hardball's Chris Matthews ranted that  opposing gun control could lead to the assassination of a future American president or politician. Matthews fumed that he supports new restrictions because "the next mass shooter could well emerge out of this pack" of the "politically nutty."  

He lobbied, "Check the shooters of John F. Kennedy and Jerry Ford, who got shot at twice. Look at the men that shot Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and George Wallace. They all had political motives and they all had guns." In the very next sentence, Matthews sneered, "And if you're not against this movement, you're with it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]