Gun Control

While it may have been surprising that all three broadcast networks covered on Monday evening the deadly violence in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend, what wasn’t surprising was that they looked to blame guns for the violence and advanced the cause of more gun control (as opposed to gang violence or the need for better policing).

On Tuesday, none of the major English or Spanish-language networks devoted any news coverage during their evening newscasts to the decision by the Obama administration to not follow through with a proposed ban on ammunition that is often used in AR-15s. The move by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) comes after an overwhelming response from gun owners, gun rights…

On Monday night’s NBC Nightly News, the program took a look at how Utah is now allowing teachers to obtain concealed carry permits to have firearms in their schools after training and continually passing background checks. As the media has done countless times, they found a way to turn it into coming across as a bad thing. NBC News senior legal and investigative correspondent Cynthia McFadden…

Chris Matthews devoted a segment during his MSNBC show Hardball on Wednesday evening to the tragic shooting death of a firearms instructor at a Arizona gun range after a nine-year-old girl accidently shot him with an Uzi submachine gun. Instead of discussing how tragic this incident was or possible safety measures to take in the future, Matthews and his guests chose to rail against the National…

Token quasi-conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was in full-blown contrarian mode this morning as he offered his perspective on two reporters in Ferguson, Missouri, who were briefly arrested and then shortly thereafter released. The former Florida congressman ripped the reporters in question for failing to listen to the cop’s repeated orders to exit a McDonald’s as they attempted to cordon…

In a historically illiterate Salon piece, writer Heather Digby Parton argued that “right-wing hatred” of John F. Kennedy ultimately led to his death, and that a climate of hate is once again growing because of the right’s reaction to President Obama. Of course, the entire premise of Parton’s piece is false because JFK was not assassinated by any crazy ‘gun nut’ right-winger, as she might have…

In yet another anti-gun piece, Daily Beast contributor Cliff Schecter insisted that for NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, “protecting the rights of homicidal maniacs” and “keeping the blood money flowing from international arms dealers” was simply part of the job description. Schecter made the charge in his provocatively-titled July 10 piece “Blame Guns for Domestic Murder Epidemic…

On Tuesday, continuing MSNBC’s obsession with Chris Christie,  Rachel Maddow attacked the Republican New Jersey governor for his position on guns. Christie recently vetoed a bill that would have reduced the number of bullets in a gun magazine from 15 to 10, much to the chagrin of The Rachel Maddow Show host. Maddow rejected Christie’s argument that the measure could ultimately lead to a ban…

In reaction to Georgia’s new gun law that expands legal carry to some schools, churches, government buildings, and bars, MSNBC waxed hysterical about the potential consequences of expanding the freedoms of gun-owners. On the July 1 edition of The Reid Report, host Joy-Ann Reid and her two guests were skeptical that the law would be effective and were confident that it would increase violent…

In the immediate aftermath of the tragic shooting at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon, gun control fanatics were ready to go straight away to their never-ending crusade to slap more and more restrictions on gun rights. Some of them went on air, however, in the guise of apolitical security experts. Take the June 10 edition of MSNBC’s The Cycle, where the panel brought on security and…

This won't go over well at MSNBC to say the least. In the wake of Monday's shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, radio libtalker Ed Schultz, who also hosts an MSNBC cable show, wasted little time in saying further restrictions on gun owners would be pointless. (Audio after the jump)

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…

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…

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…