On Wednesday, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn had a tense back-and-forth over the issue of gun prosecutions at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Graham’s aggressive tack caught the attention of “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough who ranted against the South Carolina senator and other like-minded members of Congress on his Thursday program.
According to Scarborough, the opposition to background checks and limits on high-capacity magazine and “assault” weapons, stems from a “can’t do” mentality. Had that mentality been applied in other hard situations in recent U.S. history, he said, the country would be worse off.
“The arguments that are made in opposition to background checks, that are made in opposition to the high-capacity magazines — the argument is the same,” Scarborough said. “‘We can’t do anything. It’s not going to do anything. We’re helpless to curb gun violence.’ Here the country that as we always say sent a man to the moon, the country that beat Nazism, the country that beat communism, the country that crushed the Soviet Union, the country that has done more things, has fed more people, has freed more people in the history of mankind, that did everything it could do to track down Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, destroy them, crush them — and by the way most of these people were on my side. I said go after him. Do what it takes. You got to waterboard them, waterboard them. You have to be tough, be tough.”
“These are the same people now who are telling us there’s nothing we can do to protect our kids in school,” he continued. “There’s nothing we can do to protect our teenagers when they go to the movies. There’s nothing we can do to protect our grandmothers when they go to church services. There’s nothing we can do to protect our mothers and daughters when they go to malls. These are the people who say we’re helpless. These are the people who say that say we’re impotent. These are the people who would make you believe that we’re castrated, that we are weak, that we are wimps, that this is just all too impossible. We can’t do anything to protect our children in schools. There’s nothing we can do. We’re helpless. Who are these — thank God this wasn’t the attitude these people took when al-Qaida took down the Twin Towers. Thank God they didn’t sit around in circles because somebody was paying them and say there’s nothing we can do. You know what? We can put screeners up in airports but bad guys are going to get through any way. It’s not going to stop anything.”
Scarborough continued his rant, suggesting that this mentality demonstrated a reluctance to keep children, mothers and grandmothers safe, and also showed a lack of confidence in the country.
“It’s the most pathetic thing I have ever heard in my life,” Scarborough said. “They’re helpless. They are castrated. They’re hopeless. We can’t do anything. Are we really that weak, guys? Are you really going to go back home to your district and let your district know that you’re so weak and pathetic that you can’t protect their children in school? That you can’t protect their mothers when they go to church? That you don’t even have what it takes as a leader to force background checks to try to keep guns out of the hands of felons and people who are mentally ill? Really? Is that your America, because if that’s your America, I don’t want you in Washington, because you make America less safe. You have a lot less confidence in the United States than me.”
“You know guys, have the courage to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons,” Scarborough added. “Do something to stop them from walking into a gun show and buying a Bushmaster.”