Cross posted on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.
On Monday afternoon, Andrea Mitchell used her MSNBC show to give gun control activist Fred Guttenberg an unchallenged forum to bash Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and advocate for universal background checks. Mitchell went along with him by citing misleading polls alleging near unanimous support for such reforms by the public.
After introducing Guttenberg, who sadly lost his daughter Jaime in the Parkland school shooting, the MSNBC host recalled Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst being heckled over the issue as Mitchell posed:
Watching Joni Ernst being yelled at and booed when she talks about mental health as an issue compared to the larger issue of what guns are doing and how people are getting guns in their hands that they've no right to have in their hands, that tells you something. But we still see no action coming from Mitch McConnell. And that House bill on background checks has been sitting there since February 28.
Guttenberg derided Senator McConnell as a "shockingly weak man," and recommended that members of Congress visit their local cemeteries and find out how many died because of gun violence. He then praised Dick's Sporting Good and NASCAR for moving left on the issue of guns, and then called for legislators to pass more background checks as a "first start."
Mitchell followed up:
There's no question there's almost universal support for this -- 94 percent of suburban women in our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll support expanded background checks on all gun sales and transfers -- 76 percent support the ban of selected semi-automatic firearms.
Not mentioned was the history of voters not even giving close to 90 percent support when actually given a chance to vote on universal background checks in states like Maine, Nevada, and Washington.
Guttenberg went on to predict that opponents of more gun control will be "fired" in the next elections.