-Republicans, the gun lobby,
and Fox News are once again lying
and making ridiculous excuses for why they oppose wildly
popular gun safety measures after two horrific
mass shootings in the span of less than a week. For more on this,
it's time for "A Closer Look." As we slowly emerge from
the grip of one deadly plague that's ravaged the country for
the past year, the coronavirus, we're once again
being confronted with yet another deadly plague that has haunted this country
for decades, the plague of gun violence. And in both cases,
there's been a small minority of sociopaths with outsized
power in our politics who stand in the way
whenever the rest of us try to do something about it. They've been too busy
melting down about Dr. Seuss or the Looney Tunes
or Potato Head dolls. Next, they're gonna
start whining that the Biden administration
is trying to outlaw PEZ. You can have
my Spider-Man dispenser when you pry it
from my cold, dead hands! Not my PEZ-ident! In fact, on Monday,
Fox News barely covered the horrific Boulder shootings
in prime time. Sean Hannity opened his show
by briefly mentioning it and then quickly moved on
to something that he apparently considered
much more important. -We start tonight,
a Fox News alert -- Tonight authorities responded
to a shooting at a supermarket
in Boulder, Colorado. Officials are currently,
right this moment, holding a press conference. We have our reporters
on the ground. We'll bring you the details
as they emerge tonight. We start tonight
and turn to Joe Biden, who after falling not once,
not twice, but three times trying to climb the stairs
on Friday, enjoying a restful weekend with zero public events
on Saturday and Sunday. -That's grim. Hannity's a guy who would watch
"Manchester by the Sea" and then be upset to find out
there's no blooper reel. "I know it was a sad movie,
but you're telling me there weren't any on-set goofs
or mix-em-ups?" And, Sean,
no one's happier than I am that after a president who fell upward his whole life
metaphorically, we ended up with one
who somehow did it literally. Three times. But, my God,
get your priorities straight. 10 people were murdered
in a mass shooting in Boulder less than a week after
eight people were murdered in a mass shooting in Atlanta, a hate crime
that killed six Asian women amid a horrific nationwide rise
in anti-Asian hate crimes. And on top of all that, there's also
the more than half a million who've died from a pandemic
that's still raging. And your top story is the president tripping
on the stairs? How's that gonna go over
with your sponsors? Aren't most of them
stair-lift companies? And then the next night,
Hannity attacked Democrats for supposedly rushing to, you
know, do something about it. -Democrats now rushing to capitalize on yesterday's
horrific mass shooting without any details, as usual. Thank you for standing up
for our Constitution and the Second Amendment, because apparently
many are not tonight, and Joe Biden's
threatening executive action. -Well, Sean,
that's exactly right, and the modern-day left
is more and more extreme. -Ted Cruz looks like
he got canned from his job at the mythical creature
temp agency for stealing office supplies. "I'm sorry, Ted, but we're
gonna have to let you go. You stole a bunch of pens,
and the yeti types faster." Second, you guys repeat
the same bull[bleep] line every time we go through this
awful ritual that gun safety advocates are somehow rushing
to politicize it. First of all, we have
an epidemic of gun violence that killed more than 19,000
people last year alone. A majority of Americans
want gun safety reforms, including universal background
checks, mandatory gun licenses, and a ban
on semiautomatic weapons. It's the politicians and
their patrons in the gun lobby that are holding those up. Second, the people
who suddenly decry politics when a shooting happens are the same people who put guns
in their political ads, or proudly display guns
in their backgrounds during political events, like they're Zooming in from
a remote hideout in the woods during a zombie apocalypse. I mean, look at this.
That's insane. I don't care
how you feel about guns. Casually showing off a bunch
of killing machines like this is demented. If I accidentally found a room
like this at a dinner party, I would make an excuse
and leave. "Did you find
the bathroom okay?" "Uh, you know, I did. Also, honey,
the babysitter called, and the boys are not feeling
well, so we should --" "Oh, no, you went right
at the end of the hallway instead of left, didn't you?" "No, no, no, no, no, no,
I only went left. I only saw a bathroom. The boys, though, honey,
they're very sick. We should go.
It's diarrhea." "No one is going anywhere! Oh, Cyrus, when will you put
a lock on the gun room door?" And lastly, let's dispense
with this ridiculous lie that has become canon
on the right that standing up to any
sensible gun safety legislation means standing up for
the Second Amendment. It's one of the greatest cons
in the history of politics. For most of American history, the idea that
the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right
to own whatever gun you want was never even contemplated. Conservative Supreme Court
Justice Warren Burger famously called it a fraud. -If I were writing
the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing
as the Second Amendment. -Which says? -That a well-regulated militia being necessary for the defense
of the state, people's right to bear arms. This has been the subject
of one of the greatest pieces of fraud --
I repeat the word fraud -- on the American public
by special interest groups that I have ever seen
in my lifetime. Now, just look at those words. There are only three lines
to that amendment. "A well-regulated militia." If the militia, which was
going to be the state army, was gonna be well-regulated, why shouldn't 16 and 17 and 18
or any other age persons be regulated in the use of arms? -That point
is so blindingly obvious, it's shocking
we even have to debate it. When the amendment was written, even the militia was supposed to
be well-regulated. Do you think the founders
would look at this and say, "That's exactly what we meant"? And that's not even taking
into account that the founders could never have conceived
of the weapons we have now. In their day, it took
nine minutes to load a gun, and half the time,
you pulled the trigger, and it just went "ppfff" and
the shot fell out on your shoe. Those dorks
were tying keys to kites to learn about electricity. If you let Ben Franklin
fire an AR-15, he would [bleep]
his burlap yoga pants. "Deborah, I invented
electricity!" "Invent some better pants, Ben!" [Bleep] hilarious, but his wife
was named Deborah. I would have thought the first
Deborah was born in like 1940. Or how about private sales
of guns, like at gun shows, which often don't even require
background checks, a loophole the vast majority
of Americans want closed? Watch this clip and ask yourself whether the people who wrote
the Second Amendment would consider this
well-regulated. -If you buy a gun from someone in the business
of dealing in firearms, federal law
requires background checks. But the private dealers
are not legally required to conduct background checks. -I would ask you for
a Virginia driver's license. That way I know you're
from within the state. -But if I gave you a fake
Virginia driver's license, you would never know?
-I would have no idea. -Would you trust me?
Do I have an honest face? Would you sell it to me?
-I'd trust you. Think you have an honest face.
-Okay, but that being said, sometimes if you don't think
someone has an honest face, if you have a bad vibe,
you don't sell it? -Correct.
-That's right. All you need to buy a gun in
this country is an honest face. We better hope to God Paul Rudd
never decides to raise an army and overthrow
the U.S. government. By the way, that dude's almost
two years older than Ted Cruz. That's what happens when
you moisturize your face instead of your hair. Paul Rudd would have to spend
seven hours in a makeup chair to look like a man
20 months his junior. The idea that
the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right
to own a gun unconnected with service
in a militia, an idea that was codified
in 2008 by the conservative majority in
the disastrous Heller decision, is, to borrow Warren Burger's
phrasing, a fraud. In fact, the argument
is so absurd that in 1982, Senate Republicans
issued a report claiming to have discovered... I'm sorry, long-lost proof? Was it written in invisible ink
on the back of the Constitution? Or did you discover
a secret stone tablet hidden inside the Liberty Bell? Did Nic Cage find this for you? Because while he is clearly one
of our greatest living actors, I thought we had established
a bipartisan consensus that we cannot trust
the veracity of this man's
long-lost documents. [ As Nicolas Cage ] The
Constitution says yes on guns, and I was given up for adoption
by a velociraptor. And, yeah,
I know my current haircut looks like Samberg's
Nic Cage wig. [ Normal voice ]
Again, as Warren Burger put it,
it's a fraud. And, of course, the NRA
is no stranger to fraud, given that it is
currently bankrupt as the state of New York
pursues a fraud case against the organization. NRA officials allegedly conned
their members out of millions by fundraising off
the Second Amendment and then using that money on,
among other things... These guys treated
the NRA bank account like it was
the Showcase Showdown on "The Price Is Right." The simple fact is, it is too easy to get a gun
in this country and we have
far too many of them. Keep in mind that the U.S. has about 4%
of the world's population, and yet it also has... And I appreciate that they
crunched the numbers, but the fact that we even need a sophisticated
statistical analysis to tell us there's a connection
between how many guns we have and how many gun deaths we have
is insane. If you eat a bunch of chili dogs and then ride the Cyclone
for an hour, you don't need
a quantum physicist to tell you why you barfed
all over your date. Maybe it's because I get nervous
around the opposite sex? That's not it, pal. There is a very obvious
connection here. Every analysis, every graph
correlating guns and gun deaths tells us that. And there are proven solutions
we could implement. Famously, Australia
confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted. And yet every time another one of these horrific
shootings happen, the same awful ritual plays out. The overwhelming majority
of Americans say they support commonsense
gun safety measures, like universal background
checks, mandatory gun licenses, or a ban on assault weapons. And then there's the other hand, a much smaller faction
of callous sociopaths, who lose their minds
at even the suggestion that we should maybe make it
just a little harder to buy a gun in this country. -Every time there's a shooting,
we play this ridiculous theater where this committee
gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing
to stop these murders. -Oh, I'm sorry, Ted Cruz. Are we keeping you from
something more important? Are you supposed to be
on spring break in Cancún holding the beer bong
for a bunch of sophomores from Michigan State? You don't get to call anything
ridiculous theater after you jetted off to Cancún
during a deadly blackout, then flew back for a photo op
where you handed out water, then jetted off again to Orlando for the Conservative
Political Action Conference. That photo op was
such ridiculous theater, I'm shocked you didn't
get cast on Broadway. Tonight, the role
of Mr. Mistoffelees will be played by Ted Cruz! And the good news is, even that
wouldn't make "Cats" any worse. And, by the way, these guys
don't even have a coherent logic for why they oppose
gun safety measures supported by the vast majority
of Americans. Just listen to Louisiana senator
John Kennedy accidentally make the argument
for gun safety reforms at yesterday's hearing. -I'm not trying to perfectly
equate these two, but... We have a lot
of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to -- We ought to try
to combat that, too. But I think what many folks on
my side of the aisle are saying is that the answer is not to
get rid of all sober drivers. -Great idea, Senator. Let's treat guns
like automobiles. You have to take a test
and get a license before you can use one. You have to register it
with the government, and the cops can take it away
if you use it irresponsibly or if you leave it on
the wrong side of the street from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m.
on Thursdays. Imagine if every time
you accidentally committed even the tiniest infraction with
a gun they towed it like a car and the only way to get it back
was to take the F train down to a lot in a part of
Brooklyn you've never heard of called East Coney Island Heights that only exists for like one
magical week every 100 years and then pay a $1,000 fine
to a guy in a tiny booth who only accepts euros
or camel cash and doesn't seem
to have any sympathy for the fact that you were
only parked illegally for five minutes to run into
the only goddamn café in New York City
that makes a matcha latte up to your wife's
impossible standards. "Buddy! Buddy, can you hear me? Can you hear me
through the glass? Buddy!" Most gun owners would be like,
"Forget it. Keep my gun." But there you go -- Kennedy said
let's treat guns like cars. Fine by me. Introduce your legislation
and let's get it passed. Of course, it won't surprise you
to learn that he immediately
backed off that and downgraded to a new,
dumber proposal. -In my judgment, we do not need
more gun control. We need more idiot control. -You know, your fake folksy
schtick isn't fooling anyone. This guy went to Oxford, so when he comes out hee-hawing
and chewing on a weed, it's a little like watching
Damian Lewis in "Billions." We know you're British. You can eat as much pizza pie
as you like. We know you're British. And you're wonderful. But if you really think
we need idiot control, how about we start with
the party that elected the guy who thought you could
cure coronavirus by shooting bleach up your nose
with a turkey baster or the guy who thinks snowballs
disprove global warming or the congresswoman
who wore a "censored" mask while speaking into a microphone
on television on the floor of
the United States Congress or the senator who thinks --
and this is real -- that Greenland got its name
because it used to be green. That is a real thing Wisconsin
senator Ron Johnson said. Not when he was 9, which
would have been adorable, but this month, when he told
"The New York Times"... Sure, dude, that's how Greenland
got its name. Just like how Germany
got its name because that's where
germs come from or how Canada got its name because everyone there
loves ginger ale. And like, ha ha,
Ron Johnson's dumb. But it's worse than that. He was using
that disprovable fact to argue that climate change
isn't real because Greenland
used to be green. It wasn't just a wrong answer he
was giving on "Idiot Jeopardy." And, by the way, just a reminder
to all you pro-gun con artists once again claiming it's
the so-called radical left rushing to take away
everyone's gun. The most recent president who actually said we should
take people's guns away wasn't Joe Biden
or Barack Obama. It was this guy. -Allow due process so
no one's rights are trampled, but the ability to go to court,
obtain an order, and then collect
not only the firearms, but any weapons
in the possession -- -Or might take the firearms
first and then go to court. Because that's another system. Because a lot of times,
by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court, to get the due process
procedures. I like taking the guns early. So you could do
exactly what you're saying but take the guns first,
go through due process second. -I like taking the guns early. No Democratic president
has ever even come close to saying something like that. And without due process,
no less. Mike Pence must have thought
he was having a fever dream. "Oh, God, someone
must have spiked my milk with 2% milk
from the devil's teat!" The GOP and its allies in the right-wing media
and the gun lobby are at odds with
the vast majority of Americans who have said in poll after poll they want
this senseless epidemic of horrific gun violence
to stop. There are proven solutions
we could implement, and there are bills the Senate
could pass right now that would make a difference. But despite the fact
that a majority of Americans want those solutions
and want gun violence to stop, one of our two major parties
are under what you might call... -Idiot control. -This has been [As John Kennedy]
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