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Watch Megyn Kelly Skirt Obama’s Point About Oregon UCC Shooting To Help NRA Spokeswoman Knock Gun Laws

Posted by Ellen -7859.80pc on October 02, 2015 · Flag

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After President Obama made some impassioned remarks about the shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College and the need for better gun laws, Megyn Kelly turned to National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch as the sole guest for “analysis.”

In his statement, President Obama called for stricter gun laws as the way to prevent mass shootings:

We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.  So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings.  Friends of ours, allies of ours—Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours.  So we know there are ways to prevent it.

… I would ask news organizations—because I won’t put these facts forward—have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports.  This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you.  We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so.  And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.  How can that be?

Yesterday, Vox published a must-read article  with maps and charts about gun violence that specifically addressed these points. The data is both chilling and unmistakable: states and countries with more guns have more gun deaths. States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

In three hours of prime time last night (O’Reilly, Kelly, Hannity), I saw not one show put forth the tally President Obama called for, though there were plenty of attacks on his comments. Kelly relied on gun nut Loesch, who recently made a television ad for the NRA.

In this discussion, Kelly played a few brief clips of President Obama’s 12½ minute fiery speech.  Apparently, Fox News felt his statements were so powerful, the network needed almost all of the six minute segment to counter them.

Kelly immediately cast doubt on Obama. “That was President Obama in the White House briefing room, just hours after a gunman opened fire at an Oregon community college. The president conceding that we do not yet know the gunman’s motives or how he got his hands on those weapons. But Mr. Obama insisting that this is yet another tragic reason for new gun control laws.”

Kelly’s first comments to Loesch were, “We have no idea how he [the shooter] got those guns. None. No idea. He could have stolen them from a law enforcement officer for all we know, who had the guns legally, or somebody else who had them legally. And yet the president already out there saying this is about tightening the restrictions, Dana.”

But President Obama was not talking about how the shooter got his guns; he was talking about the availability of guns in general.

More to the point, Obama’s message was the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S. that can and should be prevented via gun laws. He was not speaking to the details of this particular incident.

“We know nothing about this individual, we don’t know the motivation,” Loesch said accusingly, though she did think it worthy to mention that the shooter had asked people’s religion before shooting them. “It was incredibly disappointing to see the president, at a time when he should have been holding the country together, make such statements when there’s no basis for this.”

Even worse, Kelly made a pretense of fact checking by outsourcing what should have been her own job (she’s the one who claims to be a “straight news anchor”) to Loesch. For example:

KELLY: Let’s get specific. Because one of the claims he made was about how when you have more gun control laws, you have fewer shootings.

…Now, you’re a Second Amendment supporter. But you’ve literally written a book on this. Is that true?

Notice that Loesch did not say it wasn’t during her attack:

LOESCH: He comes from Chicago so I find that a little hard to believe that he’s stating that. I mean, Illinois has some of the strictest gun control laws in the United States and you can’t even basically drive through Illinois without having your ammunition and your firearms stored in a certain way. …There are a lot of Roseburgs (where the UCC shooting occurred) that happen every single weekend in Chicago and they have quite a few gun laws as do Washington, D.C., New York, New Jersey. The list goes on.

Instead of noting that Loesch had cherry picked statistics which, even if they were true, do not reflect their states’ statistics, Kelly aided the deflection and distortion. “Criminals are not obeying the gun laws,” she added.

“What is the bottom line?” Kelly later asked. “Because people look at this and they say we’ve gotta get rid of the guns, the guns are the problem.” Again, it’s supposed to be Kelly’s job to provide facts and context. Yet she allowed Loesch to use the question as an opening to spout off more pro-gun talking points.

LOESCH: Gun-free zones are criminal protection areas and that’s what we usually see. The evidence and the statistics, it’s all right there. I mean, you can’t refute numbers. You cannot refute the statistics. Look at the cities here in the United States.

Statistics? What statistics? There were almost none in this entire discussion. But Loesch went on to claim that it’s untrue there have been 45 mass shootings this year because “the majority of them” were “gang violence.”

That doesn’t disprove a single thing about the effectiveness of gun laws. But Kelly murmured her appreciation and said with hammy gratitude, “Dana, thank you for being here.”

Recently, Kelly said about Fox News, “I think we try to tell both sides. The difference with Fox is, unlike many television networks, it’s not dismissive of the conservative point of view.” This perfectly sums up the disingenuousness of both Kelly and Fox News. Because while it’s technically true both sides get “told” and that the conservative point of view is not treated “dismissively,” the larger truth is that only one side is given credence and that almost any non-conservative point of view is not just treated dismissively but disparaged.

Watch this perfect example of Fox News propaganda below, from the October 1 The Kelly File.

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Ned Miller commented 2015-10-04 18:40:07 -0400 · Flag
Fox simply presents the news and opinions their viewers want. Their ratings would drop if they supported gun restrictions. The US has way more gun violence than any other industrialized nation. As long as the US has 300 million+ guns (over 40% of world total) we will continue to be far and away the leader in gun deaths. It is pretty obvious. And gun owners will never give up their guns.
Tori Smith commented 2015-10-04 10:13:10 -0400 · Flag
I appreciate Kelly’s questioning of how he could have gotten the guns, but let’s be honest, she’s just trying to twist the president’s words to make her point, which is not even clear after reading this article.
Bemused commented 2015-10-03 07:01:34 -0400 · Flag
Thanks for a truly great post, Ray Michaels.
Ray Michaels commented 2015-10-03 05:46:28 -0400 · Flag
Too bad that Kelly and Fox are NOT such strong supporters FOR the peoples right to vote! They sit back while Republican legislatures across the country pass LAWS to RESTRICT peoples’ rights to vote in elections so they can stack the deck. Never hear a PEEP abut this flagrant attempt to deny people access to the voting booth AND THEIR CONSTITUTIONSL RIGHTS ! But they actively promote the cause of the NRA to make sure that nuts keep getting guns to kill! FOX THE NETOWORK OF DOOM AND GLOOM is without a doubt the most destructive organization in the USA today! When it comes to spreading hate, prejudice and misinformation they have far surpassed the KKK and other hate groups like them!
Joseph West commented 2015-10-03 01:47:55 -0400 · Flag
LOESCH: He comes from Chicago so I find that a little hard to believe that he’s stating that. I mean, Illinois has some of the strictest gun control laws in the United States and you can’t even basically drive through Illinois without having your ammunition and your firearms stored in a certain way.

I realize Loesch is a paid spokesperson for a murder machine but she’s so wrong about Illinois gun laws. CHICAGO has strict gun laws but, as a report from a few years back pointed out, the overwhelming majority of guns IN Chicago actually originate in the Chicago SUBURBS. Of course, you and I both know this mouthpiece for the murder lobby group called the “NRA” is well aware of the state of gun laws in both the city of Chicago and the State of Illinois (especially as her group were largely responsible for bringing suit against Chicago for its law prohibiting the sales of handguns in the city and getting that law overturned.
Manuel White commented 2015-10-02 20:57:39 -0400 · Flag
I think Obama is right, we need more and stricter gun laws, we need to change something because guns are too easily obtained by mass murderers. Their needs to be checks on the person and their reasoning for purchasing a firearm, as well as making the gun permits stricter and harder to obtain, to ensure the safety of the innocent citizens. There have been an abundance of mass murderers, where the innocent was killed for no reason. Maybe their should a mental evaluation of the people who are buying firearms, it seems to me that the mentally unstable are obtaining guns too easily, with bad motives.
Lakeview Greg commented 2015-10-02 15:36:42 -0400 · Flag
FFS, let’s at least make it as hard to get a gun as it is to get a driver’s license!
Lakeview Greg commented 2015-10-02 15:35:13 -0400 · Flag
Let’s see, I am fairly sure every major assassination in the US since I was born back in ’57 has been done with a legally purchased firearm of some sort. Most of these mass shootings seem to be done with firearms that were purchased legally. Nearly all accidental shootings in the home that may or may not involve a child seem to happen with legally purchased guns.

Say there’s no problem? You are a damn idiot.
Anita Hall commented 2015-10-02 15:32:50 -0400 · Flag
These “compassionate imbeciles” will never go against the NRA until one of them winds up in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down due to the “right to bear arms person” who shot him/her. Will it take a personal family tragedy for them to get off their high horses or will they still stand firm to their ugliness. Lord only knows what it will take ~ and in time ~ they shall receive back ten-fold what they have been dishing out.
Vicki Dreyfus commented 2015-10-02 15:19:28 -0400 · Flag
Go see the movie NETWORK. Roger Ailes did, and then he founded Faux News.

It’s a prescient movie that has completely come true —…
NewsHounds posted about Watch Megyn Kelly Skirt Obama’s Point About Oregon UCC Shooting To Help NRA Spokeswoman Knock Gun Laws on NewsHounds' Facebook page 2015-10-02 13:21:04 -0400
Instead of facts, "independent" Megyn Kelly turned to NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch to respond to President Obama's call for reporting on guns.








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