Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
MS NOW Hosts Call for More Gun Control, Daniels Admits Oregon Already Strict
In the aftermath of the school shooting at occurred at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, several MS NOW hosts reacted with the typical complaints that Congress did not pass gun control after the Sandy Hook shootings even though it would not have been relevant to the circumstances of the attack.
And only a few times was it mentioned that Oregon already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
After host Ali Velshi let State Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-TN) promote gun control on Thursday night, on Friday Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough lamented:
I was a fool believing that Sandy Hook would change things. I was a fool to believe that this Congress would have the courage -- that Congress over the past decade would have the courage to do what 90 percent of Americans have wanted them to do for decades.
And that is have background checks on every single gun sale that 80 percent of Americans support, red flag laws, that they wouldn't listen to the extremists -- the five, the seven, the nine percent -- and all of that gun money -- and they would support red flag laws, that they would do the basics. And they just haven't done it, Willie, and these tragedies keep going.
On Saturday's Connect show, host Jacob Soboroff portrayed Republicans as doing nothing on the issue of school safety: "Democrats have long pushed for stricter gun control measures. Republicans and the gun lobby have typically resisted, many opting for -- for the -- the phrase that is so familiar, 'Thoughts and prayers.'"
Before bringing on Pearson as a guest, Soboroff boosted the left-wing activism of the Tennessee Democrat:
... a newly elected 28-year-old state representative, Justin J. Pearson, refused to let business continue as usual during a house session. Along with two of his colleagues, he led chants and joined with protesters in the galleries demanding gun safety legislation. You know what the Republican majority did? They answered by expelling him and another Democrat from the legislature for violating decorum rules.
Without noting how much gun control already exists in Oregon, Soboroff fretted over a law passed in 2022 being blocked by court challenges. He concluded the segment by cuing up Pearson to rationalize his disruption of the Tennessee state capitol in 2023 in ways that could have incited a mob against his colleagues.
By contrast, on Friday's The Moment, fill-in host Eugene Daniels admitted that Oregon already has strict gun laws that failed to stop the attack: "...in Oregon, you guys have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And yet we see what happened yesterday still."
His guest, Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Change conceded that the area has been aggressive about utilizing red flag and safe storage laws.
It is also noteworthy that crime researcher Dr. John Lott has pointed out that Bend's school system banned conceal carry holders from bringing guns into schools several years ago.
On Thursday's The Weeknight, co-host Luke Russert admitted that Oregon gun laws are strict, but then complained about the "fringe" challenging some laws in court. He also described the 2022 ballot initiative as popular even though it received less than 51 percent of the vote.
And State of Play host Peter Alexander on Friday cluelessly admitted that he has never heard of an armed civilian stopping a shooting attack before in spite of the many times it has happened.
Transcripts follow:
MS NOW's The Weeknight
October 15, 2026
7:13 p.m.
LUKE RUSSERT: Congresswoman, Oregon passed something by referendum called Measure 114, which I know you're familiar with, which is one of the more stricter gun laws in the country. Every Town, USA ranks Oregon as the 12th strongest gun laws in the country -- permit to purchase system. And this is something that fringe groups are trying to get rid of in the courts, but something that the citizenry of Oregon really wanted.
Talk a little bit about -- we just heard about that last mass shooting that happened in Bend, Oregon, not long ago. Oregon's been through this, and Oregon has responded because this is something that too many parents have had to live with, too many people have had to live with in this state. Talk about that a little bit -- how the state has responded and is really seeking to try to eradicate these types of things.
(...)
MS NOW's Morning Joe
October 16, 2026
7:45 a.m. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH: A 16-year-old with a long gun. You know, I am often accused by Mika of being overly optimistic. And I'm -- I'm -- I'm proudly optimistic. But I've got to say, I was a fool believing that Sandy Hook would change things. I was a fool to believe that this Congress would have the courage -- that Congress over the past decade would have the courage to do what 90 percent of Americans have wanted them to do for decades.
And that is have background checks on every single gun sale that 80 percent of Americans support, red flag laws, that they wouldn't listen to the extremists -- the five, the seven, the nine percent -- and all of that gun money -- and they would support red flag laws, that they would do the basics. And they just haven't done it, Willie, and these tragedies keep going.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah. I mean, if Sandy Hook, the slaughter of young children, was not a wake up call for the country -- it was a wake up call for the country -- I shouldn't say that. It wasn't a wake up call for Washington and for politicians. What will be? And, I mean, the fact that this goes down again, the murder of three little children inside an elementary school on October day, that that becomes another story, or the latest school shooting, of which there have been 36 this calendar year in K through 12 schools in the United States. It can't become a statistic. We can't allow perhaps troubled 16-year-old to get his hands on a long gun and shoot his way into our kids' schools.
(...)
Money, Power, Politics
October 16, 2026
ALEX TABET: Another big outstanding question is: How did this 16-year-old procure this long gun? In Oregon, the gun laws are relatively strict to the rest of the country. There is a law that requires gun owners to lock firearms or keep them away from the immediate control of minors or other unauthorized users.
(...)
State of Play
October 16, 2026
11:08 a.m.
PETER ALEXANDER: We have covered I can't keep track of how many of these school shootings, shootings in general. One thing about this one that made it seem unique was that a bystander who was armed followed the shooter into the school and was ultimately the first one to confront them. I don't think I've ever heard of something like that. Is that -- I trust that's rare. Have you ever heard of a situation like that before? And what a difference this person made.
KATHERINE SCHWEIT, CREATED FBI ACTIVE SHOOTER PROGRAM: You know, I -- I'm just finishing some research on 25 years of school shootings. And there's really only a couple of situations where we did have a bystander involved. And -- and -- and sometimes it's a bystander who approaches somebody outside of school -- tries to shoot somebody, you know, outside of the school to prevent them from going in. So we've had a few situations like that. We haven't had a bystander run into the school in this situation.
And I, you know, I think that -- I appreciate that we're blessed that this happened, but it could have also gone very bad so that individual could have been killed themselves. Their individual -- people could have shot more victims -- there could be more victims. So it's not a perfect situation, but it is one more factor that we have to consider is that law enforcement is trained specifically for this, because we know that there might be somebody with a gun who is in the school helping out, and it makes it a lot trickier for law enforcement. But also, you know, if you're there and you happen to have the right moment to do it, you know, we want you to do it. Of course.
(...)
The Moment with Katy Tur
October 16, 2026
2:23 p.m.
EUGENE DANIELS, FILL-IN HOST: What needs to change in this country, in your view? Because even in Oregon, you guys have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And yet we see what happened yesterday still.
PHIL CHANGE, DESCHUTES COUNTY COMMISSIONER: Yes. Thank you for that question. Because that grieving, that asking of, you know, that seeking to make sense of an incident like this for me translates into the question of, you know, what could we have done? What can we do in the future to prevent tragedies like this in our community? And one of the hardest things about this for me is that our community has done a lot of things to prevent a tragedy like this. We have -- the county has developed a healthy schools partnership with the Bend-La Pine school district that tries to make sure that our schools are supportive and welcoming places where kids feel like they belong. We have -- we offer school-based health centers with behavioral health clinicians at our schools.
You know, throughout the school district, throughout Deschutes county, our community makes some of the most active use of extreme risk protection orders under Oregon's red flag law in the state of Oregon. So we we have some of the highest numbers per capita of people of use of ERPOS -- of extreme risk protection orders to remove guns from people who are going to harm themselves or others. We have very active programs to -- to support our community in safely storing their guns, getting access to gun locks. And so we have done all of these things. Which maybe helped prevent something like this from happening in our community sooner, but they were not enough to prevent something like this from happening to our community yesterday.
(...)
Connect with Jacob Soboroff
October 17, 2026
11:26 a.m.
JACOB SOBOROFF: A promise to protect the spaces where our kids learn and play and make friends is one that millions of Americans demand of their leaders after every single tragedy like Silver Rail. And on this No Kings Day, it calls to mind what happened when the survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school mobilized. When they did that, the March for Our Lives movement was born. Hundreds of thousands strong, marching and registering voters and calling for sensible gun safety laws. It's something they are doing to this very day.
Democrats have long pushed for stricter gun control measures. Republicans and the gun lobby have typically resisted, many opting for -- for the -- the phrase that is so familiar, "Thoughts and prayers." Three years ago, after six people, including three nine-year-olds, were murdered at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, thousands marched on the state capitol. There, inside the chamber, a newly elected 28-year-old state representative, Justin J. Pearson, refused to let business continue as usual during a house session. Along with two of his colleagues, he led chants and joined with protesters in the galleries demanding gun safety legislation. You know what the Republican majority did? They answered by expelling him and another Democrat from the legislature for violating decorum rules.
Just days later, he was reinstated through a unanimous local commission vote. They tried to strip him of his seat, but they were never going to silence his voice. Joining me now is Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson from his campaign office in Memphis. He's also the Democratic nominee for the state's 9th Congressional District. I'm so glad to talk to you today. Good to see you.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE JUSTIN J. PEARSON: Jacob., I'm so grateful for the opportunity because we know that what we are dealing with doesn't have to be the way that it is in our country.
SOBOROFF: You've modeled that as well as anybody. Representative Pearson, the entire Bend community is now shattered by a nightmare that you know too well from Tennessee. Having walked alongside grieving families in Nashville, you know, what is the -- the reality of that type of trauma? What does it look like in the days after the cameras leave? And I think most people have not been through this, thankfully, wonder how does a community even begin to process it?
(PEARSON)
Everytown for Gun Safety points out that, in the United States this year, there have been 99 different incidents of gunfire on school grounds, and those have resulted in 33 deaths and 63 injuries. And some, by the way, of Oregon's tightest gun safety laws that were passed by a ballot measure in 2022 are now being held up by court challenges there. When -- I guess, Representative, when voters demand reform, but the courts in the state houses block them, what do you see as the path forward to actually keep kids safe?
PEARSON: One of the reasons that I'm running for the United States Congress is to make sure that we have more gun safety laws because the truth of the matter is, the majority of people in the United States of America want extreme risk protection orders, want for people to have permits to carry firearms, don't want 16-year-olds having long guns, or people having their firearms in places where it's easily accessible to someone who would do danger to themselves and to others.
But we're going to need national protections because people in states like Tennessee, and folks who don't want to see the protection of children and the protection of teachers are going to fight us at every turn. But it's our responsibility to pass laws that protect everybody because we can't allow a few, a small minority, to stop us from progressing and saving the lives of millions.
SOBOROFF: I know that you're going out today for one of the No Kings rallies. For everyday people who feel powerless in the face of of the type of legislative inaction that you're talking about, how do you see the role that -- that taking to the streets actually plays in, in creating the systemic change that you're looking to -- to -- to make happen?
PEARSON: Taking to the streets, protesting, raising our voices, building solidarity and the solidarity dividend that (Heather) McGhee talks about is so important. And it is foundational to our democracy, particularly in a time where billionaires are trying to tell us we're powerless, where people who are in positions of power are trying to take away our right to speak and our right to speak itself. We have a responsibility to engage with one another in a fight to protect the values and the ideals of this country. It is our country. It belongs to we the people. And going out today with No Kings, as our group of folks here in our office are doing, is to make sure that we reclaim the nation that we love.
SOBOROFF: Well, you know, so often I think when people march and when they rally, the immediate pushback from leadership is the same that you got up in the legislature: appeal to decorum and procedure and order, stay within, stay within the lines. Having been on both sides of that as an elected lawmaker inside the chamber, but also as an activist outside of it, what do you say to the people who argue that -- that -- that there's protest out there that's causing us to be distracted from the way that things get done?
PEARSON: Yeah, they are lying. If the way that things get done worked, we wouldn't have so many people in poverty. If the way that things have been getting done (Soboroff starts nodding) worked, we wouldn't have billionaires who are building toxic data centers three miles away from my wife and I's home. Let's be honest, the people who are telling us to draw inside the lines, they're the ones who drew the picture. And the picture has always been for the billionaire class on the top and the working class at the bottom. And we need new lines drawn. And that's what our protest is about. That's what our fight for democracy is about -- that the people be elevated, not just those with positions of power born into the right families or owning the right corporations.
SOBOROFF: Thank you so much, Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson. And good luck out there today.
. steve malzberg
. steve malzberg
