“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough says the senators who voted against expanded background checks for gun buyers on Wednesday are providing “the opportunity for terrorists, for gang members, for criminals, for violent rapists” to purchase firearms.
The former Republican congressman also predicted that new gun control measures would eventually be passed.
“Most of the time, I know, when you lose, you lose,” Scarborough said Thursday. “I agree with Howard Dean on this one — we have only begun to fight. This is just the beginning. With every violent act that occurs in the future, and with guns being shipped from one gang to another. With terrorists going on the Internet advertising how easy it is to kill Americans because of our weak background check system, Mike [Barnicle], this has just begun. This will not end until we have a background check system that keeps our families and Americans’ families safer.”
Scarborough also criticized Senate Democrats for not pursuing filibuster reform at the beginning of the Congress and warned New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte that her vote against background checks would come back to haunt her.
“And you know, Mika [Brzezinski], I’ve got to go back to the beginning of this session — there was a lot of talk about filibuster reform,” Scarborough said. “And there were a lot of Democrats and I was out there talking about the need for filibuster reform. And for whatever reason, the Democrats didn’t push. I remember saying it — the day they made the rules to get rid of the filibuster, make 50-plus-one pass, if they had made that decision when they set up the Senate, then this bill would have passed.”
“I got to say just really quickly, I know we got to go to break, but Mark Halperin, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, voting against background checks for terrorists, voting against background checks for violent rapists, voting against background checks for gang members — I don’t know that she really helped her cause in New Hampshire for re-election, did she?”
The former Florida congressman then declared the Republican Party is “moving toward extinction.”
“You know what, you don’t ignore — you do not ignore 90 percent of the American people on an issue of public safety,” he added. “You don’t do it. They did it yesterday. And I’ve got to say, mark it down, this is going to be a turning point in the history of the Republican Party as well.”
“And let those out there chattering, let them chatter away all they want to and scream like hyenas. Let them do what they want to do. This party that killed this background check yesterday, this party is moving toward extinction. A new Republican party will replace it and this is going to be a vote that people are going to look back on and say, ‘That party, that extremism — that was unsustainable.'”