The gun enthusiasts at the Media Research Center were pretty darn excited when the Supreme Court overturned a ban on bump stocks that mimic an automatic weapon — implemented under the Trump administration after it was used to help kill dozens of people in a gun massacre in Las Vegas — and unsurprisingly angry that non-gun-humpers questioned the wisdom of the ruling. Nicholas Fondacaro spent a June 14 post whining that the dissenting justices’ opinions were noted:
Friday marked a big win for gun rights advocates when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Trump administration-era ban on bump stocks by the ATF. In their immediate reactions to the 6-3 ruling, CNN Newsroom pontificators were largely unhappy with the court’s affirmation of a piece of plastic not being a machine gun and lauded the “fiery” dissenting opinion authored by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Of course, the opinion just flaunted their ignorance of firearm mechanics.
Chief legal analyst Paula Reid seemed rather disinterested while reading the majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who explained the technical details of the mechanical workings of a firearm that would lead to a machine gun designation:
[…]She followed up by lauding Sotomayor’s “fiery” but ultimately ignorant take on machine gun mechanics. “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger. Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun,” the liberal justice proclaimed.
To use her duck analogy against her; Sotomayor might see a creature with a bill and webbed feet that lays eggs and loves to swim, but what she’s calling a duck is actually a platypus (Not to be confused with the 1911 Platypus from Stealth Arms, particularly their “Perry the” model).
“And yes, you can read from that dissent from Sotomayor. She’s frustrated and she’s been making it clear. She’s been frustrated lately on the Supreme Court,” host Jim Acosta sympathized with her.
Luckily, Republican strategist and owner of GunsOut, LLC Shermichael Singleton was on set to school the liberals on the basic mechanics of firearms:
Alex Christy complained that a man who has directly felt the impact of gun violence was allowed to have an opinion:
Reacting to the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling striking down an executive ban on bump stocks, MSNBC’s Joy Reid welcomed Fred Guttenberg, daughter of Parkland victim Jamie Guttenberg, to The ReidOut. While Guttenberg naturally blasted the Court’s decision, he also opined on matters that have nothing to do with gun control, such as claiming Justice Clarence Thomas hates America and that the decision will possibly lead to pre-election violence from MAGA.
Reid simply opened the floor up to Guttenberg, “Fred, I hate that I call upon you and only see you in these circumstances. But I just want to let you respond to what the Court did today.”
Guttenberg claimed that Friday was also the day that “demolition crews started tearing down the building that my daughter was killed in, my daughter and 16 others” and asserted that “because of today’s decision, we won’t be talking about 15 killed or 20 killed. We’ll be talking about 100 killed or 200 killed.”
He would then turn his attention to Thomas and add, “More people are going to die. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s signature will be on their death certificate.”
People like Reid invite people like Guttenberg on their shows because they think his tragic story gives them the moral authority to say things that they would be less likely to get away with. However, Guttenberg left the realm of gun control activism and entered the realm of progressive activism more generally when he added, “For whatever reason, that man hates everything that makes America great, and this is going to be so deadly.”
Christy then huffed that Reid raised the specter of election violence by right-wingers emboldened by the ruling: “The idea that there are a bunch of Trump supporters who are now going to possibly shoot up a polling place because of this ruling is wildly irresponsible and Joy Reid should not be allowed to get away with it by simply citing Guttenberg’s tragic biography.”
Jorge Bonilla defended the majority opinion in a June 16 post grousing that a Republican was asked about it:
While sitting in as host of the latest edition of ABC’s This Week, Jon Karl attempted to gotcha Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion on bump stocks, leading into an exchange on crime. The exchange did not end well for Karl.
[…]So much of what passes for “journalism” these days is this performative attempt at gotchaing conservatives against past statements. At issue in the majority opinion on bump stocks is whether unelected bureaucrats within the ATF have the authority to reclassify a hunk of plastic as a “machine gun”. The Court found that they do not, and this would have made for an interesting discussion on This Week. Alas, that did not happen.
Bonilla spouted similar whining in another post that day.
Fondacaro returned in a June 17 post to complain that gun violence in the wake of the ruling was discussed:
Over the weekend, three communities across the United States were victims of gun violence as parties and gatherings came to sudden ends when scumbags decided to kill people. NBC’s Today looked to exploit the tragedies on Monday by having correspondent Erin McLaughlin blame the murders on the U.S. Supreme Court, citing their decision to strike down the Trump-era bump stock ban. But none of the shootings involved bump stocks.
[…]“The weekend shootings come just days after the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks,” she proclaimed as if the shooting were direct result of the conservative justices defending gun rights and pushing back against the administrative state. “The gun accessories used to modify semi-automatic weapons so they can fire faster. But this morning, many are just searching for answers.”
Despite her suggestion, there’s no evidence that bump stocks were used in any of the shootings. As of the publication of this piece, it appeared as though authorities had not yet released what kind of firearm was used in the Round Rock and Methuen shootings, but it’s likely that if it was an “AR-style” rifle, it would have been plastered everywhere. In fact, a handgun was recovered from the scene of the Rochester Hills, which was incompatible with bump stocks.
Fondacaro then moved on to another bogus hobby horse of his:
If that misinformation wasn’t bad enough, she also cited claims from the left-leaning Gun Violence Archive that, “So far this year, there have been 225 mass shootings in the U.S.” NewsBusters has repeatedly debunked their hyperbolic numbers and pointed out their deceptive methodology.
Fondacaro is lying, as he usually is. As we’ve documented, he and the MRC have never “debunked” the Gun Violence Archive’s numbers — they are completely accurate, and he’s just mad because he doesn’t like the group’s methodology, which tends to make guns look bad.
All of these writers, by the way, completely censored any mention of the Las Vegas gun massacre that prompted the bump stock ban the Supreme Court overturned.