Joy Reid Compares Concerns Over Gun Confiscation With The Klan

On Wednesday’s ReidOutJoy Reid of MSNBC continued her week-long panic over guns. Joy demonized all gun owners and those who oppose gun control. Joy Reid even went so far as to say that conservatives’ concerns about gun confiscations are similar to those raised by the Klan during Birth of a Nation in the 1900s. 

Reid opened the conversation by telling a story about a conversation that she had with Bishop William Barber. She recounted how “in 1915, ‘Birth of a Nation’ which was the first real blockbuster, and still is one of the most-watched movies of all time, came on the scene just at the end of the era where reconstruction died and the troops were pulled out of the south in 1877 and in 1915 a friend of Woodrow Wilson, the President at the time.”   

Reid continued that “it created a rebirth of the Klan and, of course, lynchings followed because you had this sort of depiction in the media of apocalyptic fear of this black menace.” She then asked one of her guests Charles Blow of the New York Times what he makes “of the fact that it’s happening again?” 

In response, Blow went after the National Rifle Association (NRA) right out of the gate claiming “the NRA has figured out that this works, and there’s a blood pact between the Republican Party, the NRA.”  And claimed the NRA “create[s] menaces out of everything.” 

After Blow was finished, Reid jumped in again and continued her bizarre historical comparisons: “then you had Nixon who said oh you know what? We’re going to demonize the hippies and the black and brown people with this war on drugs, but it was great politics to get more people to vote.” 

She then asked Blow if it surprises him that “there is no pause or sense of guilt” from the NRA for “creating rage that then produces violence.”

Blow predictably responded that it doesn’t surprise him because the NRA “look[s] at this as collateral damage.” 

This segment from MSNBC was made possible by Angi & WeatherTech. You can link to their information.  

To read the relevant transcript click “expand”: 

MSNBC’s ReidOut
6/1/2022
Eastern at 7:08 p.m. 

JOY REID : Charles, I’d like to tell you about this. You see, I was talking to my friend Bishop William Barber. He did a little bit of another thing. He talked about the fact that you know in 1915, “Birth of a Nation” which was the first real blockbuster, and still is one of the most-watched movies of all time, came on the scene just at the end of the era where reconstruction died and the troops were pulled out of the south in 1877 and in 1915 a friend of Woodrow Wilson, the President at the time, translates— this sort of — creates this film, and he screens it in the White House and it becomes a huge film. To show you how it looks, we’ll play a small clip here. After the Civil War, the Klan was defeated by it. This created a new Klan, and lynchings were inevitable because of that media depiction of the apocalyptic terror of this black threat. It’s not a new phenomenon. This is not a new phenomenon. You’ve seen it before. 

CHARLES BOLOW: I believe the guest was right. This is how the NRA works. There’s an agreement between the Republican Party and the NRA and gunmakers. You can see that money and power are being turned around all the time. They create threats out of every situation. One menace that they create that I don’t think we touched on enough here is the menace that something will actually happen. There will be an assault rifles ban. So when people see Barack Obama win and background checks increase, people rush to purchase guns. They assume something might happen that would prohibit them from owning them. You also see this happen following mass shootings, which gets lots of national attention. Because they believe that someday something may stop them buying these guns, people go out to buy more of them. 

Donald Trump, in a sense, was the worst thing for NRA and gunmakers. They didn’t have foils. Because they didn’t have a foil, they could not say that he was going to do it. They had to find other enemies. The border crossings were the enemy. There will also be a race war. They’re constantly trying to determine who will be the best foil in order to generate the most angry cells within the electorate. And that gain, as you just pointed out, they’ve been playing it forever. Conservatives have played this game for a long time in this country, but it’s a new version and it is. 

REID: What you can do — Birth of a Nation was a fascinating way to get that done, as you mentioned. Nixon replied, “Oh you know what?” With this war on drugs we’re going demonize hippies, black and brown people. But it was excellent politics to get more voters to vote. It has always been there for a reason, you know. Either a financial purpose or a political one. I suppose I will ask Charles the same thing — to comment on the same question. Do you find it shocking that violence is created without any sense of guilt, no pauses, and there are never moral or legal pauses? 

BLOW. It’s not surprising to me. I believe they view this as collateral harm. 99.9%, because there are so many of them, never use them in mass shootings. The weapon of choice in violence is the handgun and not the AR-15. So the vast majority who have AR-15s do not use them in any violent manner and likely will never. So they look at that and they say well the vast majority of the weapons that we’re selling are not doing anything, these are the kooks, these are the weird off-shoots who are doing this and we have to say that’s all it takes. When you have these guns, it only takes one percent to inflict incredible damage.