I’m not always an MSNBC fan. Some of the hosts and guests tend to be too “inside the beltway,” and the network can become obsessed with news stories that have more sensationalism than substance. (However, it deserves credit for not airing a segment that discussed whether the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was snatched up by poltergeists — thanks for that one, CNN.) But I’m a big fan of MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who brings the same grit and down-to-earth sensibility she displayed at The Grio to the cable network.
So it was extra fun to watch her dismantle open-carry gun goon Tov Henderson. You might remember good ol’ boy Tov from Open Carry Texas (OCT), where he and his group have repeatedly insisted that it’s Americans’ God-given right to strut around kindergartens and NASCAR races with a beer in one hand and an assault rifle in the other. Even the National Rifle Association — the NRA, for Cthulhu’s sake! — called OCT “downright weird” for insisting on dragging their “long rifles” into family restaurants and scaring hell out of moms, dads and kids. Tov can’t see the problem with that, and Joy Reid gator-wrestles with him for three painfully entertaining minutes on why regular not-radical folks might not want to be in the same restaurant with a group of grinning thugs with artillery pieces strapped to their backsides.
Instead, Tov tries the patented NRA rope-a-dope: talk about anything and everything instead of the fact that people want to be safe from gun-toting loons. Reid asks him one simple question: couldn’t he understand that many people would be frightened if they came across a group of heavily armed goons while taking Buffy and Jody to dance practice? Tov refuses to answer. Instead, he begins by rhapsodizing about the difference between his group and the “independent” Open Carry Tarrant County, the open-carry group that recently stomped around a Home Depot in Northland Hills, Texas. He goes from that to saying that, well, since the OCTC goons were in an outside parking lot and not inside a structure, there is absolutely no comparison between the two situations (because no right-minded person would be afraid of gun-toting goobers as long as they’re outside …). Reid keeps trying to pin him down:
If you were, let’s say in a movie theater, given what happened in Aurora, given that my kids still don’t want to sit near the door when they go to the movies … because that shook them so much when that shooting took place; given that you’ve had a shooting in a theater, do you think it would scare people in a movie theater if you walked into a movie theater with your long gun exposed?
A sane and rational person would likely answer “Yes” or some variant therein. A sane and rational gun rights advocate would likely say “Yes” also, and reassure her that he would never want to frighten her children. Then, if he felt the need to lecture her about how Ben Franklin stormed Bunker Hill with an M-16 to protect our God-given rights to carry military ordnance into the nursery, then he would have at least made some acknowledgement of their mutual humanity.
But Tov does none of that. Instead, he responds by denying that the question had any validity because he wasn’t aware “of any group that’s ever walked into a movie theater” toting heaters. (So it’s the venue that makes all the difference? By this point in the exchange, I am shaking my head like a hound dog with ear mites.)
Reid is starting to become a bit exasperated, also:
It’s funny, I can’t get you to answer a very simple question of, do you think it scares people to see — let alone one armed person, but a bunch of armed people, in this day and age when we have so many mass shootings. Do you think it scares people?”
At this point, Tov is in full blithering retreat. Apparently the Great Gun Gurus who own and operate the “guns everywhere” movement have forbidden unfortunate folks like Tov from ever admitting that anyone might legitimately be put off by seeing guns paraded around in public. Instead, Tov hides behind generalities:
I think it has the potential to do anything, to have all kinds of emotions.
So, one person might be scared upon seeing ten jugheads with AR-15s, but others might squeal with glee, maybe even run up to hug Rifle Boy. It’s just like seeing Ronald McDonald and Pinkie Pie!
He does actually admit that “potentially” some individuals might be a bit perturbed by seeing squads of armed yahoos as part of what he calls “a large range of emotions” they might experience. Reid actually invites him to “name some of the emotions” they might feel, which gives him the opportunity to claw his way out of the verbal quicksand and start yamming about how most people express their support for them when they see them strutting around parking lots and nursing homes armed to the teeth. They are fascinated, Tov asserts, and want to know more about how they, too, can move into their mom’s basement, don camouflage, pack on a hundred pounds of extra flab, and become part of the Open Carry Revolution!
Reid asks the obvious question: if everyone is just thrilled to be next to the open carry boys, why have so many restaurants banned guns from being brought into their establishments? Tov has obviously been waiting to jump on this one with both booted feet, and blames the whole thing on
a concerted effort by a group that is backed by Michael Bloomberg, an anti-gun group, a gun control group, and they have started trolling, you know, coming to our [Facebook] pages, and they’re seeing where we’ve been, and they turn around and then start petition drives, and get people who are not even in our state to sign up, sign these petitions and say they won’t even come to a, uh, that restaurant if they see our members inside it.
Ah, the warm, comforting sensation of victimization. I bet Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams never had petition drives protesting them taking Porkchop Hill with their Uzis and ribaudequins.
Anyhow, the entire thing was, as Grandpa Jones used to say, not necessarily silly, but merely foolish. See for yourself and then go do something productive.
Published writer since 2001, focusing on politics, history, Web development, and other topics. First book is coming soon.
