Watch: Samantha Bee Exposes Shameless NRA-Controlled Puppets
Last week, the C-SPAN excitement was on when 40 Democrats took to the Senate floor to argue for gun control. But among those unimpressed with the filibuster were Senate Republicans; not even Ted Cruz, who “before getting [his] ass handed to [him] by a screaming carrot demon [cue Trump photo]… was best known for trying to shut down the government with 21 hours of bedtime stories,” Samantha Bee, host of “Full Frontal,” recalled. Cruz ended his 2013 anti-Obamacare filibuster after 21 hours and 19 minutes.
“But Democrats wouldn’t shut up until Republicans agreed to vote on two amendments,” Bee said. As Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) explained, “We need to close the terrorist loophole and we need to make sure we’re doing universal background checks,” which shouldn't even be controversial considering that 90 percent of Americans—including gun owners—want national background checks that close loopholes.
“And zero percent of Americans want terrorists to have guns!” exclaimed Bee, which if you didn’t know, “you must have been living under a rock, which is fine, that’s a good place to hide from an active shooter. Stay there, while we talk about the powerful paranoid lobby that dumped nearly $1 million into Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign.’”
But for GOP leaders, jumping "in the holster of Big Gun," as Bee put it, isn't always how it's gone down; in fact, Republican presidents in the past have spoken out passionately against the NRA.
“Ronald Reagan banned open carry in California as soon as the Black Panthers realized it applied to them,” Bee unloaded, then ironically remarked, “Reagan’s prejudice was vindicated years later when he was shot by noted Black Panther John Hinckley Jr.”
But Reagan did support an assault weapons ban and “in ’91 he openly flipped off the NRA,” Bee added.
Reagan wasn't the only Republican who opposed the NRA. George H.W. Bush "publicly quit the NRA because he was disappointed by their hateful, paranoid rhetoric,” Bee said, paraphrasing H.W.’s “Letter of Resignation Sent By Bush to Rifle Association” published in the New York Times in 1995.
And being the father of Jeb and W., elder Bush knows a thing or two about disappointment, right?
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