MSNBC’s Joy Reid said Wednesday during “The Reidout” that she was afraid to leave her house on July 4 because America is “awash with guns.”
Reid was joined by Ryan Busse, a former firearms industry executive, and asked him about what has “changed” in the US to make it a “shooting gallery.”
“I have to say, I did not go out on July 4th and would not. The idea of going to a mass gathering, a parade, or a big fireworks thing outside seems insane to me, to be blunt, in America, because America is awash with guns, and now people don’t just have them, they seem to want to shoot people with them and use them for whatever, you know?,” she said.
Busse argued, “But I think a lot has changed, especially in the last 20 years. We have doubled the number of guns in our society in the last 20 years. And I think this really is the test of our democracy. The right to own firearms is an immensely powerful thing. In fact, nothing is more targeted at the ability to remove the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of fellow citizens in a second or two, dozens of them as we have seen than the right to own firearms.”
He said that we are “stress testing our democracy.”
Reid claimed later in the segment that there were “more violent incidents against Asian Americans” because former President Donald Trump “pinned COVID on China.”
“And so the gun industry goes, oh, Asian-Americans, buy more guns. When ever there’s a mass shooting, you see people buy more guns. And now I don’t know how anybody can be a Doordash-er. I don’t know how anybody can do a job where they have to deliver to someone’s home or deliver Amazon. Ringing a doorbell is deadly now. The industry has also encouraged not — the stand your ground laws say don’t just have a gun, shoot someone. Use it. Somebody rings your doorbell, shoot them because we’ll protect you under the law,” she said.
Reid and Busse also discussed a mass shooting in Philadelphia that left five dead this week.
Investigators say Kimbrady Carriker, 40, arrived to the scene of the shooting ready for a prolonged gun fight. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner said the suspect had an AR-15 style rifle, a handgun, a scanner for monitoring police traffic, and a ballistic vest.
Krasner said that despite Carriker’s preparation, the attack was a “random, premeditated deliberate killing carried out with an assault rifle.”
After the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action last week, Reid told her viewers that she got into Harvard because of affirmative action.
“I got into Harvard only because of affirmative action,” Reid said. “I went to a school no one had ever heard of in Denver, Colorado, in a small suburb. I didn’t go to Exeter or Andover. I didn’t have college test prep. I just happened to be really nerdy and smart and have really good grades and good SAT scores.”
She continued, “But someone came to Denver to look for me. A Harvard recruiter flew to Denver, and I met me up with her at the Village Inn Restaurant and did a pre-interview to pull me into Harvard. I was pulled in — affirmatively.”
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.