On Thursday's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough claimed a recent op-ed by Wayne LaPierre was "laced with racial overtones" because the NRA president suggested Brooklynites should have the right to defend themselves from Hurricane Sandy looters and border state residents needed protection from violent gangs.
After reciting an excerpt from the LaPierre op-ed, Scarborough ranted: "Wayne LaPierre is suggesting if you are against Americans being able to own assault weapons with 30-round high-capacity magazines, that somehow you're going to -- and he said Hispanic drug gangs are coming to America, and those terrible people in Brooklyn, don't go out after dark. I mean, this is so laced with racial overtones."
Of course, Scarborough conveniently ignores the NRA’s history [1] of helping black-Americans defend themselves against racists.
Scarborough then went on to engage in one of his favorite activities, lecturing the GOP, as he warned them against following LaPierre's lead: "The Republican party, if they were smart, their leaders today would condemn it, but they're not smart. They're scared. And you know, they keep running scared, they're going to lose more votes. They're going to get hammered in future elections if they allow this clown to continue to lead them around by their nose. They're shameful. They need to be leaders."
Scarborough's slam against LaPierre is just the latest example of the media's overwhelming bias [2]against guns.
The following was aired on the February 14 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Now he's [Wayne LaPierre] against any reasonable gun safety legislation. This is what he writes in his op-ed...."After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the Hellish world that the gun prohibitionists," I never liked prohibition. "The gun prohibitionists see as their Utopia. Looters ran wild in South Brooklyn." Really? What's he suggesting there?
"There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you night not get home at all. Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars," etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And then of course he talks about the "phony stimulus spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won't be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are the perils we are sure to face - not just maybe. It's not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival. It's responsible behavior, and it's time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that."
Mike Barnicle, I don't know where to start. Yeah, it's responsible to own a gun. It's responsible to protect your family. It's responsible to have a handgun in your house. It's responsible to have a shotgun. It's responsible to have a hunting rifle. But Wayne LaPierre is suggesting if you are against Americans being able to own assault weapons with 30-round high-capacity magazines, that somehow you're going to-- and he said Hispanic drug gangs are coming to America, and those terrible people in Brooklyn, don't go out after dark. I mean, this is so laced with racial overtones.
MIKE BARNICLE: Oh, absolutely.
SCARBOROUGH: That the Republican party, if they were smart, their leaders today would condemn it, but they're not smart. They're scared. And you know, they keep running scared, they're going to lose more votes. They're going to get hammered in future elections if they allow this clown to continue to lead them around by their nose. They're shameful. They need to be leaders.
BARNICLE: Key word is "clown." You could take this excerpt from his editorial, whatever it is that he wrote, bring it a few floors up from here and put it on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and it would get great laughs if performed as well as you just performed it, Joe. Wayne LaPierre performs from a platform of fear. That's what he's peddling, he's peddling fear. And he's peddling it on behalf of gun manufacturers, not gun owners.
SCARBOROUGH: No. Yeah, he doesn't care about – he doesn't care about gun owners.
BARNICLE: Gun manufacturers.
SCARBOROUGH: It's about money.
BARNICLE: Yeah. That's what it's about. Selling weapons.
...
SCARBOROUGH: Everything that Republicans are now trying to do to make up for their 27 percent showing in the election with Hispanics, Wayne LaPierre has undercut with this letter by talking about Latin American drug gangs. And talking about South Brooklyn. And, again, a racially tinged, very suggestive op-ed by Wayne LaPierre who Republicans are blindly following around.
-- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here [3] to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.