For her Tuesday show, Andrea Mitchell welcomed an unbalanced panel of Daily Beast editor Sam Stein and two Democratic partisans to discuss gun control. The gun control portion of the panel began with Mitchell playing some clips of Democratic presidential hopefuls discussing gun control, the last of which was Kamala Harris, "We've been having great ideas for decades. The problem is Congress has not had the courage to act. If they don't within the first 100 days of my administration I'm going to take executive action."
After the clip of Harris concluded, Mitchell lamented to former Obama appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Joyce Vance, "Even the House has not passed anything on assault weapons or those big magazines." Vance agreed with both Mitchell and Harris, "Yeah, I think that's right. And Senator Harris gets it exactly right when she says they haven't had the courage to act. But that includes everyone. You would think that with some of these new poll numbers with support for universal background checks in the 90s, even with support for assault weapon bans with a strong majority of Americans, Congress would have the cover it needs to take steps that law enforcement has always sought and known were desirable."
Vance then spread some fake news about the assault weapons ban that was in place from 1994-2004. He declared that, "You know, we had a ban on military assault-style weapons in this country in the '90s and it was successful. And when that ban stopped being in existence because of pressure from the NRA and other gun supporters, that flooded those weapons back into the country."
The claim that the ban on such weapons was successful is not a new one and the Washington Post, hardly an organization beholden to the NRA, gave Bill Clinton two Pinocchios when he made the same claim. The Post cited NYU Professor Charles DiMaggio who stated that fewer people died as a result of mass shootings during the ban, but that it is impossible to prove causality, "No single observational epidemiological study, ours included, can establish causality,”
Former Obama and Hillary Clinton advisor Neera Tanden concluded by defending House Democrats, stating that they will take up the issue of "getting these weapons of war and what's required for these weapons of war off the streets," because dishonest terminology aside, Democrats and the media apparently think turning millions of law-abiding citizens into criminals by banning weapons such as the AR-15 is a sensible policy move.
Here is a transcript for the September 3 show:
MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell Reports
12:51 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: And that's the perfect segue to the candidates. Joyce, let's take a look at what some of the candidates have been saying this weekend on the trail.
BEGIN CLIP
BETO O’ROURKE: We have too many guns. We sell to one another weapons of war that were designed to kill people on a battlefield that are used to kill people in a Walmart or on the side of a street or in a church or in a synagogue or in a mosque.
JOE BIDEN: We’ll work with Mitch McConnell where we can agree but on this one, we’re not going to agree because he is where the president is and so we just have to beat them, flat out beat them.
KAMALA HARRIS: We've been having great ideas for decades. The problem is congress has not had the courage to act. If they don't within the first 100 days of my administration I'm going to take executive action.
END CLIP
MITCHELL: And, Joyce, even the House has not passed anything on assault weapons or those big magazines.
JOYCE VANCE: Yeah, I think that's right. And Senator Harris gets it exactly right when she says they haven't had the courage to act. But that includes everyone. You would think that with some of these new poll numbers with support for universal background checks in the 90s, even with support for assault weapon bans with a strong majority of Americans, Congress would have the cover it needs to take steps that law enforcement has always sought and known were desirable. You know, we had a ban on military assault-style weapons in this country in the '90s and it was successful. And when that ban stopped being in existence because of pressure from the NRA and other gun supporters, that flooded those weapons back into the country. It will be very difficult to walk that back but we can start with background checks and proper resources for the law enforcement agencies that have to conduct those checks and reclaim guns that are sold improperly but, also with banning high capacity magazines. These magazines that enable shooter in one of these mass settings to get off multiple shots in a very short period of time, at least starting with that and then moving forward on slightly more controversial provisions like the assault weapon ban, seems like a really well warranted direction for Congress to move quickly.
NEERA TANDEN: I would say I think Judiciary Committee will be actually taking up a ban on high capacity weapons next week when they're back because I do think they recognize that there is an urgency around not just background checks but getting these weapons of war and what's required for these weapons of war off the streets.
