A clearly shaken Geraldo Rivera responded to today’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with a dramatic rant against the sales of assault rifles.
Rivera, the father of a 12 year-old, appeared on the Hannity show tonight to discuss the tragedy in Florida.
RIVERA: It makes me sick. How’d he [the shooter] get the gun? … How’d he get all these magazines? … It is just absolutely outrageous. 25 of these school massacres since Columbine in 1999! When are we going to say that this is a national emergency? You want to spend 25 billion on a wall? What about spending 25 billion in making our schools secure from these – these savages that all they want to do is inflict blood and mayhem.
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The AR-15 was designed to kill people. Ever since the Brady ban expired, we‘ve been selling them like hotcakes. I mean, please!
Rivera was outnumbered by people who disagreed, of course. Guest Larry Elder argued, “Far more people are killed with handguns than with AR-15s so if you really want to ban a weapon in order to deal with this carnage, you’d be banning all of the weapons.”
Rivera flew into a rage.
RIVERA: That’s a bogus argument, Larry! … Did you hear those guns going off in that school? Did you hear the guns going off in that video in that classroom? Did you hear that AR-15? Did you hear that bang, bang, bang and there’s a kid, a sophomore in high school, defenseless, and this guy’s got a long rifle and he’s poppin’ with that AR-15? Come on with this debate already.
Elder continued his hand gun whataboutism.
“I don’t think it’s about the gun,” Hannity opined, despite having no credentials in education, school safety, public safety or psychology.
Then he turned to David Clarke, a guy who endorses violence with tweets such as, “BREAKING NEWS! When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up FAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is go right at them. Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD. Nothing gets a bully like LYING LIB MEDIA’S attention better than to give them a taste of their own blood.”
Clarke's underlings when he was sheriff of Milwaukee County were just charged in the dehydration death of a mentally ill inmate and he is the subject of numerous other lawsuits alleging abuse and mistreatment in his jail.
Yes, THAT David Clarke is still considered a credible law-enforcement expert on Fox and he told viewers, “This is not a gun control issue, we don’t need any knee-jerk reactions.”
Watch it below, from the February 14, 2018 Hannity.
It’s important to counter the vacuous pro-gun mantras by continuing to remind ourselves that other countries have done something effective. That’s FACT not opinion. In my book, those countries are showing themselves to be truly civilised. Even their conservative politicians are anxious to keep their citizens safe.
Even Canada has significantly lower death rates from firearms. Why’s that? Personally, I put it down to the FACT that they’ve always been “particular” about who can own a gun, about what sort of firearms are acceptable in private hands, and about cracking down on anybody who shoots at anything that cannot be defined as “game, in season” (including human beings).
Handguns are banned altogether (apart from competitive sportspeople and, under strict protocols in dangerous situations), and all guns are required to be stored in approved gun safes. Guns may not be used in self-defence except in the most dire circumstances – if you shoot or even shoot at an intruder, you will have to answer for it in court. Juries usually side with the homeowner, but the shooter has to take the chance of conviction, at least.
I believe hunters are able to access semi-automatic weapons subject to additional background checks and very strict security arrangements.
Twenty-odd years ago, Australia had a mass murder incident. The (conservative) government of the time immediately banned semi-automatics and began a buy-back scheme which took tens of thousands out of circulation. They have not had a similar incident ever since.
Who do they think relates to these idiots? Minorities aren’t as stupid as their frightened geriatric crowd.
Ban all guns? Naw. The horse left the barn already. It’s just an observation America has a right-wing more guns is better policy which has made us the most violent nation in the developed world and up there with 3rd world nations like Yemen which is going through a civil war.
A lot of people like myself would like to see the AR-15 banned. It’s a military weapon designed only to kill or create vicious wounds in people with its high-velocity rounds. It fails in home defense and hunting. However, as mush as I tend to disagree with Hannity, he is right that school shootings will keep occurring in our gun-nut nation using pistols. Or shotguns. Too many guns in circulation and too many crazed gun-nuts who can access them.
The NRA’s solution is have a gun on you at all times. But think about something. You’re standing in line at a movie theater and some guy in full body armor gets in line behind you with an AR-15. Even if you have a concealed weapon on you how safe to you really feel?
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1823016659
So what makes us different? Only country with an NRA. And, to my knowledge, we’re the only country where there are more guns in circulation than citizens.