Maddow on Love for Guns: 'I Just Don't Think We Should be Allowed to Bring Them Home'

Rachel Maddow, gun lover? Well, sort of. And with some strings attached.


The MSNBC host of the “The Rachel Maddow Show” appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s Aug. 31 NBC show and told the host about her first date – at a shooting range.


“My first date with my girlfriend Susan was at a shooting range,” Maddow said. “That was awesome. It was ladies’ day on the range. Her sister is a lifetime NRA member and she was organizing ladies’ day on the range at her gun club. So we did it. We shot AR-15s and we threw tomahawks and we did archery, pistols and skeets.”


However, Maddow’s gun enthusiasm goes beyond romantic rituals with her girlfriend. She also bragged of making “liberals shoot guns.”


“When I had my radio show – that was my full time job, before I was on TV, I used to bring all of my producers to the shooting range in Manhattan,” Maddow said. “There’s one down on 20th Street and that’s what we’d do to unsettle them when they started working for me.”


But NRA members shouldn’t get too excited. Maddow isn’t a closet Second Amendment enthusiast. No, in fact she views guns as amusement devices that should be regulated to the point that you’re only allowed to shoot them at shooting ranges, galleries or gun clubs.


“I like making liberals shoot guns – I just don’t think we should be allowed to bring them home,” Maddow said. “It’s like I mean you go to the carnival you know, like the roller coasters – it’s fun. But that doesn’t mean you get one to come home with. Doesn’t mean you get to do your own home roller coaster – just leave it there, it’s a game.”