On Friday's Morning Joe, in the aftermath of a school shooting in Bend, Oregon, faux-conservative MS NOW co-host Joe Scarborough gave the reflexive liberal response of lamenting that Congress failed to pass gun control after the Sandy Hook shootings, and did not mention that Oregon already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
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.
. steve malzberg
. steve malzberg
