The school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas wasn’t carried out with the media’s favorite weapon to mischaracterize and demonize (the AR-15), but this was only a minor speed bump for those looking to take away Americans' rights. During Monday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews brought on anti-gun activist Nicole Hockley to join him in whining about those who respected the Second Amendment. During the segment, Matthews absurdly claimed that since NRA had hired Oliver North to be their president, the organization was somehow “immune to justice.”

“After last week's deadly shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, gun advocates tried to cast blame on anything but guns,” Matthews began his gun-bashing segment. He then lambasted Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick for focusing on hardening schools and for noting the culture’s devaluation of life. “Well, he continued to avoid blaming guns yesterday when he attributed to school shooting to violence to American culture, including he mentioned abortions.”

Matthews turned to Hockley, the managing director of the anti-gun lobbying group, Sandy Hook Promise, to rip into gun rights advocates. “I think these are standard diversionary tactics rather than dealing with the issue at hand. Talking about every possible other cause of gun violence, other than the one thing that everything is in common,” she chided.

In addition to her attacks on the pro-gun crowd, Hockley spewed forth contradictory statement after contradictory statement about. For example, while Hockley suggested she was “not about taking all the guns away,” she kept insisting the only thing all these tragic events had in common was the type of weapon:

However, I think for anyone to actively choose to maintain this blind spot and say it's everything except the one thing that all shootings have in common, and that is the choice of weapon, that is the gun. And that is something that in addition to looking at all these other issues, if that's what we choose to do for it, we need to look at the gun as well. You can't exclude it from the conversation.

When Matthews beckoned her to continue, she suggested the only thing that was worth looking at was guns. “It has to -- we have to look at the person, and we do have to look at their choice of weapon,” she said. “The only common thing is the guns. And we need to address that. And if they just choose to continue to force a blind eye on it, then they're being disrespectful and disingenuous to this problem.”

Of course, if Hockley really wanted to look at the whole problem and wasn’t just focused on guns, she would have noted that the other key attribute all the shootings had in common was the deranged people carrying them out. Her assertions also overlooked knife attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Saying we must look at the perpetrator then shifting to guns as the only commonality was the real source of disingenuousness.

Towards the end of the segment, Matthews bemoaned how the unreasonable pro-gun crowd were active in elections and took his swipe at the NRA. “And I don't understand why reasonable people have so little power at the ballot box. They just don't. The NRA, Oliver North, the fact that they would pick him. I mean, they seem to be immune to justice.”

Playing off of Matthews, Hockley attacked Second Amendment advocates who have lost loved ones to gun violence for not becoming rabid anti-gunners themselves:

But, this something that people don't engage in, unfortunately, until it happens to them. And then it's far too late. And sometimes we see even people that are very pro-gun and pro-gun rights. And when it happens to them, they still turn a blind eye. And that's something I really can't reconcile or understand.

“Everything you said before and now is what the American people believe, according to all the polling. So keep speaking for America. The NRA does not speak for America,” Matthews said to wrap up the mind-numbing segment.

The relevant portions of the transcript are below, click "expand" to read: