MSNBC’s Joy Reid went after America’s gun culture in her monologue for Monday’s “The ReidOut,” punctuating her hard-to-argue-with points with an image from this month’s NRA convention in Indianapolis, in which a young boy is seen pointing a pistol directly at a camera.
“Americans buy millions of guns a month and keep buying more, feeding a booming industry that can’t market their bloody trade in other parts of the world where they have actual gun laws, so they pump all their resources into fostering American’s sick obsession, promoting not just guns but the reckless permission to use them — legally — on fellow Americans, with barely a second thought,” Reid said.
She then went for the vugular, mocking gun-loving right-wing conspiracy theorists by wielding one of their favorite refrains.
“Want to talk about grooming?” Reid asked, before pulling up a striking photo shot by Reuters of a 6-year-old pointing a firearm directly at the camera.
“This is a disturbing image, no doubt,” Reid added. “But perhaps more disturbing is how adults are coaching their kids to worship weapons of war,” Reid said.
As unsettling as the notion may be, it’s not a new development as the NRA merry-go-round continues unabated. Indeed, a search of Getty Images’ archive shows many similar photos dating to at least 2007 of children aiming guns at the NRA’s annual convention.
In the “Gun Culture” segment that kicked off with video of the “Moral Monday Rally” in Nashville to “protest the deadly gun culture in the U.S.,” Reid broke down recent developments that included another “weekend of bloodshed and a spate of mass shootings since the children of Nashville were buried.”
Monday’s headlines also included the news that an 84-year-old white man has been charged with two felonies after shooting a Black teenager who had gone to the man’s doorstep in Kansas City, Missouri, mistakenly, thinking his siblings were there to be picked up.
“This is the feeling of an accelerated gun culture and the carnage and death that comes with it,” Reid said. “The fear, the violence — they can feel unstoppable, even all-consuming at times. It isn’t just because of American’s indifference to gun violence. It’s far more than that. It feels like parts of this country are engaged in a celebration of gun violence, a veneration and devotion that has turned America into the most heavily armed civilian population in the word — a virtual shooting gallery.
“It’s an agenda shared by the NRA,” Reid said.
Watch more of the segment from “The ReidOut” below.
