Brit Hume got his nose all bent out of shape when his fellow Fox contributor, Juan Williams, dared to point out to him that the reason we keep getting into this endless circle of stupid every time there's a shooting and calls for reasonable gun safety laws is because the NRA tosses a ton of money into the ring to make sure they're never, ever held accountable for the mayhem they facilitate.
Poor Brit. When Williams agreed with him that it was the NRA pushing opposition to common-sense laws, he pretended it was the people in the NRA. At least, until Williams pointed out that the national consensus overwhelmingly supports these common sense measures. It's the NRA's money that keeps it from happening.
Full transcript below. It's not often we get to see the generally gentle and mild mannered Williams manage to really get under one of his fellow Fox pundit's skin, but it happened here.
WALLACE: I can tell you that Hillary Clinton was very much for gun control and that Ted Cruz was very much against it and said, instead of taking away the guns from the bad - to fight the bad guys, we should be using the guns against the bad guys. Brit, you know, it's interesting, ever since Al Gore in 2000, Democrats of the national scene, national elections have stayed away from gun control, have not found it to be a winner. Do you expect Hillary Clinton to play gun control hard in the general election or is she just going to use it against Bernie Sanders who comes from a conservative hunting state like Vermont, to use it in the primaries, but not necessarily in the general election?
HUME: As a Republican strategist, I would hope fervently that she carries forward her crusade for gun control right into the general election. It is a political loser for Democrats. And it's gotten them in trouble nearly every time they have tried it. Even after Newtown when there was thought to be some sort of big new national consensus for sensible gun control, as it was called, the measure that was introduced never went anywhere in the Congress and was an utter failure by President Obama, thoroughly (ph) startling and striking failure on his part. So this is a - these are measures that, if you look at the most of the ones that are being talked about, they wouldn't have solved the problem that led to what happened in San Bernardino. And people - and they can't pass anyway. So ...
WALLACE: And why do you think that gun control, particularly we are talking not on an individual race or an individual state, but in a race for president, nationally, why is it a loser?
HUME: It's a loser because of the fervor, with which people who support the Second Amendment as it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court and used guns or own guns or believe that guns should be freely owned, basically, is greater than the fervor of the gun control advocates. And these people will vote on a single issue basis. The lobby that supports these rights is effective. And the Democrats just don't have the firepower on this issue, no pun intended, to make it work for them. And they haven't for a long, long time.
WILLIAMS: You don't think it's the NRA?
HUME: That's what I said.
WILLIAMS: The NRA, the NRA and the gun manufacturers.
HUME: Well, it's also - you know what makes them powerful? The sentiment of the American people.
WILLIAMS: No, it's the money that they raise from --
HUME: So, the people who are answering polls that they don't want this.
WILLIAMS: Oh no.
HUME: are doing so because they are paid?
WILLIAMS: No, the polls indicate that most Americans want background checks. They want the loopholes ...
