Morning Joe speaking to New Yorker author Jelani Cobb about his new article on America's gun culture
The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb published a piece slamming gun-rights supporting Americans who claim they don’t want to politicize mass shootings. He wrote that they are the ones politicizing the issue by supporting gun rights.
The New Yorker published a piece on Sunday slamming pro-Second Amendment Americans who claim they don’t want to politicize mass shootings.
New Yorker contributor Jelani Cobb wrote that Second Amendment are the ones politicizing the issue by supporting the gun rights that make mass shootings possible.
Cobb's article, titled, "The Atrocity of American Gun Culture," was a reaction to the horrific mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York, that happened in recent weeks. It also mentioned others murdered with guns this past month.
Cobb opened in a somber way, declaring, "May, a month we traditionally associate with spring, Mother’s Day, and graduations, was defined this year by a far different rite: funerals. In a single ten-day stretch, forty-four people were murdered in mass shootings throughout the country."
He described "a carnival of violence that confirmed, among other things, the political cowardice of a large portion of our elected leadership, the thin pretense of our moral credibility, and the sham of public displays of sympathy that translate into no actual changes in our laws, our culture, or our murderous propensities."
Democrat Beto O'Rourke, who is running against Greg Abbott for governor in 2022, interrupts a news conference headed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde, Texas Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
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"The knowledge that they are no longer alive—that any future iterations of those smiles have been permanently forestalled—is an indictment that we all have to live with," Cobb wrote, speaking of all the children who died from gun violence in May.
After describing the shootings in detail, the piece then slammed Second Amendment defenders’ talking points, including those of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who spoke at the annual NRA Leadership forum in Houston, Texas, over the weekend.
"Wayne LaPierre, the C.E.O. of the National Rifle Association, said, ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ The idea of vigilant protectors subduing armed antagonists spoke to a vision of a society in which firearms are as commonplace as cell phones, and where more guns mean more safety," Cobb wrote.
"If the idea seemed absurd then, the passage of time has only made it empirically so," he added.
Cobb continued, citing researchers who claim that a more broadly armed public does not make life safer. He wrote how researchers such as Emma Fridel, an assistant professor of criminology at Florida State University, "found the opposite."
"Gun-homicide rates in states with more permissive carry policies were eleven per cent higher than in states with stricter laws, and the probability of mass shootings increased by roughly fifty-three per cent in states with more gun ownership," the author wrote.
He then bolstered his claim by saying Texas’s permissive gun laws "did not prevent the Uvalde carnage any more than previous legislation allowing easier access to guns prevented the 2019 shooting that killed twenty-three people at an El Paso Walmart," and other earlier shootings.
The author defended current Democrat Texas gubernatorial hopeful Beto O’Rourke for telling Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, "The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing. This is on you."
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke speaks to the press after he was kicked out for interrupting a news conference headed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde, Texas Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills) (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
O’Rourke interrupted the governor’s press conference addressing the Uvalde, Texas school shooting last Wednesday and slammed the Republican lawmakers for not enacting gun laws. He was promptly escorted out by law enforcement.
Mentioning how Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican, "accused [O’Rourke] of making the shooting ‘a political issue,’" Cobb wrote, "O’Rourke did not politicize the shooting. The circumstances that make a mass murder of fourth graders possible are inherently political. The legal access to the weaponry involved is political. The most visible people refusing to see these things as political happen to be elected to political office."
MSNBC co-anchor Willie Geist touted Cobb’s column during the Tuesday episode of "Morning Joe." After reading an excerpt from the column, he bolstered Cobb’s claims by citing polls showing that Americans want gun control.
Claiming he wanted to add "context" to Cobb's piece, Geist referenced, "The polling that we saw again last week again that shows almost nine out of 10 Americans want universal background check, even two-thirds of Americans in the Politico poll say we should outlaw these semi-automatic assault style rifles that are so often used in these mass shootings."
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MSNBC Morning Joe co-anchor Willie Geist discusses gun rights fallout after Texas school shooting.
Some Republican leaders, such as Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., have recently argued that there is no evidence that gun control will do anything to "reduce gun crime."
"We’ve got a total disconnect between what appears the American people want done around the issue of guns and what leaders in Washington are willing to do on guns," the host added.
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