Matthews: NRA Is ‘for Everybody Getting’ Guns, ‘Including Terrorists’
MATTHEWS: “You know I love our country’s freedoms. And we were talking tonight about the New York Times. You probably read it today, Mr. Mayor, uh, Mike Schmidt wrote it. He put together the conundrum that the law enforcement people at the federal level face, and you do in New York City since it’s maybe a target, who knows. And he talked about the problem of the FBI anxious because they know that people are out there who make speeches against our country, who Twitter really anti-American lies, they talk about support for ISIS, even directly. They also have access under our Second Amendment outside of New York to go around and buy heavy hardware. They can buy AK-47s. So we have a country, you put the First and Second Amendment together and you throw in zealotry, religious-based zealotry, and we have a problem of predicting how the powder, when it’s gonna blow. And doesn’t it worry you? It worries me.”
DE BLASIO: “It worries me for sure, but I want to start at the beginning, those same exact facts you delineate, that’s exactly right, well, that’s what’s going on with militias around the country that aren’t about foreign terrorism, they’re home-grown sadly. They target law enforcement officials willingly, that, and same exact reality. The people who use violence against Americans, against law enforcement, they can get those weapons as you describe. These campus shooters who often don’t have any ideology, they have a mental health problem. They can get these weapons. You’re entirely right, the laws in this country governing the use of guns don’t stop this violence from happening in many, many forms, but I agree, perhaps the most galling of all is that a terrorist who wants to attack the United States of America and says it out loud can still get a gun at a store in this country even if they’re on a list that identifies them as a danger. You know, I’d like to believe that the NRA and others –“
MATTHEWS: “Two thousand of them have done it. Two thousand.”
DE BLASIO: “Two thousand have done it.”
MATTHEWS: “And by the way, the NRA is nondiscriminatory when it comes to who gets guns. They’re for everybody getting them, including terrorists.”
DE BLASIO: “You know what? Maybe this is a moment for some revelation, because people are waking up to the threats we’re facing around the world more and more. Maybe it’s something that will jolt the debate in this country on the availability of guns, just like the campus massacres. I’ve got to believe at some point there’s a critical mass that actually changes our politics and changes our policies.”
MATTHEWS: “You know, I thought when Bobby Kennedy, the senator from New York, was killed by an Arab terrorist, because they didn’t like what Bobby was saying about where we should have our embassy in Israel, that was the basis of his mission, if you will, Sirhan Sirhan. I wrote my congressman. I thought that would stir a change on gun control. It didn’t.”
