During her Monday night show, Samantha Bee had the difficult task of addressing a national audience reeling from the terror attack in Orlando. In her relatively short stint so far helming Full Frontal, Bee has already had to comment on gun control and mass shootings an infuriating number of times, and on Monday night’s show, in a segment called “Again? Again,” she was clearly grappling with how to present a segment that wasn’t just her howling with rage until they cut to commercial.
Commendably, she channeled her fury into a segment that eviscerated America’s ‘thoughts and prayers!’ rhetoric when it comes to gun control, pointing out that there were numerous indicators that Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was dangerous, and that, regardless, no civilian needs to own a semi-automatic or assault-style rifle. In her words, “Sam Bee wants to take your guns away? Yes! The ones that mow down a roomful of people in seconds; yes, I do want to take those guns away.”
Bee also went in on politicians like Florida Governor Rick Scott, who posited over the weekend that the best course of action to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again is to pray on it. She turned to the Bible itself to rip apart Scott’s rhetoric, quoting James 2:17 “thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Prayer alone hasn’t kept mass shootings from happening, and it’s unconscionable for Scott to say it will. As Bee pointed out, aside from signing a law preventing backyard shooting ranges in residential neighborhoods (what even, Florida), Scott has spent most of his administration relaxing Florida’s gun laws. Prayer won’t do anything to combat the prevailing belief that near-daily mass shootings are a fair price to pay for “freedom.”
You can read a handy guide to contacting your elected representatives about gun control here.
(via Slate)
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