On Thursday’s Deadline: White House, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens eschewed the obligatory disclaimer that has been used by gun control advocates for decades – the claim that they’re not ‘coming for anybody’s guns.’

Wallace complained during the show’s first segment that the arguments “on the other side” – meaning those against gun control – had become “repugnant,” whereas before they'd been “civilized.” Implicit in this remark was the assumption that the position of Republicans and pro-Second Amendment individuals has changed somehow.

But as Stephens would go on to point out, the argument in favor of the right to bear arms is the same today as it was twenty years ago: it’s in the Constitution. In an appreciable but disturbing moment of honesty, Stephens struck at the core issue of that argument, and questioned whether owning firearms really ought to be a right at all:

There is something kind of aggressively and inhumanly repetitive about this line that guns are essential to American liberties – a hard one to stomach when so many thousands of people are dying every year for this so-called ‘liberty.’

Amazingly, Wallace was fully on board with Stephens’s characterization of the Second Amendment as a “so-called ‘liberty.’” She called for “common-sense restrictions" of “this so-called ‘right.’”



So much for “aggressive and inhumanly repetitive.” These remarks by Wallace and Stephens expose the inherent dishonesty of the arguments made by so many gun control advocates when they claim they’re not interested in taking anyone's guns. If they believe guns to be the root cause of murder, and by their own admission they no longer feel the need to even pretend to respect the Second Amendment, why wouldn’t they want to ban firearms entirely?

Of course, no MSNBC show would be complete without some sort of Russia-related non-sequitur. Thursday’s installment was provided courtesy of former CIA Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, who claimed the NRA was taking money from Russia. He went on to allege that most of the people who expressed concern about mental health after the Florida high school shooting were Russian Twitter bots:

They’re taking money from Russia. They’re sitting back while Russian bots come out after the Parkland shooting, telling us that, “It’s all about mental health, they’re going to take their guns away.” They’re saying nothing. It’s time to wonder whether the NRA is for us or against us.

Finally a real solution: repeal whichever Constitutionally guaranteed liberties the supposed Russians on Twitter want us to have.