The gun aficionados at the Media Research Center defend guns at every opportunity and attack any effort at even the slightest attempt at gun regulation. When talk of gun regulation entered the news after the mass shooting in Maine — which the MRC labored to blame on anything but the guns that made such a high death count inevitable — Brad Wilmouth complained in a Dec. 2 post:
On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, viewers witnessed another soft-soap interview promoting gun-control legislation as fill-in co-host Erica Hill provided a promotional platform for Senator Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses and votes with Democrats, in the aftermath of the October 25 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
CNN feels no need to balance these discussions out with gun-rights advocates.
After spending the first part of the segment discussing the issue of whether federal spending on aid to Israel will be linked to aid to Ukraine, Hill brought up her guest’s efforts to regulate guns, which she framed as an attempt to reduce mass shootings:
Wilmouth then tried to talk down attempts to limit the size of bullet-holding magazines:
Senator King talked up his efforts to limit magazines so that they can hold only 10 bullets at a time:
[…]The CNN host could have brought up the argument that limiting the number of bullets a magazine can hold disadvantages self-defensive gun users if they are taken by surprise — possibly by multiple armed assailants who can show up prepared — forcing victims to reload while they are fighting for their lives, but Hill was true to form in showing no concerns about the potential harm gun regulations could cause.
This same show has also notably never mentioned that at least one of the locations where the recent Maine mass shooter targeted was a gun-free zone, and that there is reason to believe that cutting the number of gun-free zones would help deter high-casualty mass shootings in public spaces.
Wilmouth offered no evidence to back up his claim about gun-free zone — just a vague “reason to believe” — and he failed to note that if victims had smaller magazines, the shooters would too. He also previously complained that the massacre changed King’s mind about gun regulation.
Tim Graham spent a Jan. 20 post whining that non-right-wing media were covering discussion of gun regulation instead of his preferred right-wing narratives:
NPR hasn’t reported on the scandal of Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis potentially ruining her election-interference case against Donald Trump by having an affair with her married special prosecutor, who took her on vacations with the money she was paying him. No, they were too busy sounding like State-Run Radio on Thursday night by offering a four-minute press release for Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s now “taking a more front-and-center role on addressing gun violence” on the campaign trail.
The closest thing to negativity was anchor Juana Summers noting Harris is trying to “court younger voters, who, right now, aren’t showing a lot of enthusiasm about voting for President Biden.”
Wilmouth whined about more discussion of gun regulation in another Jan. 20 post in which he deflected from the central role of the gun in the Uvalde school massacre:
On the day the Justice Department released a report on the mistakes local law enforcement made in handling the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre from May 2022, CNN coverage of the findings predictably turned to pushing more gun control as both Democrat and Republican guests appeared to discuss the findings.
On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, State Senator Roland Gutierrez (D-TX) — who is also running for the U.S. Senate this year — was given un unchallenged forum to complain about his state’s Republican legislators opposing gun control. Toward the end of the interview, he complained:
Unfortunately, the policy holders in this state, the people that are controlling this state, Republican leaders both in the house and the senate and of course our leadership have decided to create loose gun laws that allow anybody and anybody — everybody to access a weapon of this nature. I mean, this young man was 18 years old — he bought a gun in a small town in Texas at the only gun shop in Texas (sic) on day one.
After recalling that the Uvalde gunman had bought hundreds of rounds of ammunition before attacking the school, the Texas Democrat added: “In other states, that would have been considered possibly a red flag. So it’s my hope that we not only learn best practices sure going forward, but we have to change our policy. And if our policy makers aren’t willing to make some changes, then we need to get rid of those policy makers.”
When Jake Tapper talked about background checks in another CNN segment, Wilmouth insisted that such checks are meaningless and repeated the right-wing mantra demanding more guns in society:
But Tapper’s suggestion that more background checks might have made a difference ignores the fact that mass shootings are generally carried out by perpetrators who either are able to pass background checks or steal their weapons, making new background checks irrelevant. Plus, Tapper specifying gun shows gave an incorrect impression that professional gun dealers are not legally required to do background checks at gun shows even though they are.
It would have been more relevant to point out that schools that experience mass shootings are usually those that prohibit plain clothes school staff from carrying guns on school property even though studies suggest such measures deter mass shootings from happening.
Wilmouth cited only one study, by the discredited pro-gun “researcher” John Lott. He closed by huffing: “As is typical, CNN hosts did not discuss anything that might have actually made a difference to prevent more such shootings from occurring.” But Wilmouth only offered rote pro-gun talking points in response.