Watch Megyn Kelly Cut Off Tom Brokaw as He Criticizes the NRA (Video)

NBC host suggests stricter gun laws would make no difference in mass shootings

As Megyn Kelly’s “Megyn Kelly Today” continued in its second week on air, the NBC host cut off guest Tom Brokaw as he brought up the National Rifle Association.

Brokaw later said that he couldn’t hear the host trying to toss to commercial, but people on Twitter are criticizing the moment.

Tuesday’s broadcast featured a panel discussion about the deadly massacre in Las Vegas on Sunday night, including renowned journalist and former NBC News anchor Brokaw as well as Dr. Sue Varma, Jeff Bauman and Evy Poumpouras as guests. A man in the audience asked, “We’re constantly bombarded with the news day and night. When does this become harmful to us and our children?”

Kelly passed the question off to Brokaw, who said, “We are where we are because of the power of people who wanted these kinds of guns, and the NRA managed to organize them and get them as a political force in America.”

Brokaw continued to say that “the question is, if you’re not happy with what has happened, your individual obligation as a citizen is to organize on the other side.” He noted that the NRA “has a lot of money, obviously,” and that people who stand up to the NRA are “portrayed as a traitor against America.”

“We’re a long way away from that second amendment in which we said that a well regulated militia is important to our country,” he said. The NBC special correspondent had more to say, but Kelly had to cut to commercial before he could finish. “Got it. Gotta leave it at that, Tom. Thank you to our entire panel. We’re up against a hard break, apologies Tom Brokaw,” she said.

But she had enough time before the break to add: “Sorry, they’re wrapping me hard because we got a hard break coming up. But listen, this debate will not end now. There are people who defend the second amendment who believe you can’t legislate against evil, and those who believe we have to have an honest conversation. Gotta leave it at that. We’ll be right back.”

Brokaw later told the Washington Post that the “acoustics in the studio were terrible” and he simply couldn’t hear Kelly trying to toss to break.

“Chick Hearn, the late, great L.A. Lakers play-by-play announcer had a phrase: no harm, no foul. Exactly the case this a.m. No harm, no foul. Not worth any fuss. I’m a Kelly fan,” he said.

Update: Poumpouras also stood up for Kelly’s seemingly abrupt cut-in, saying on Twitter that Kelly “stopped Tom because we had to go to commercial. I was there. He simply couldn’t hear. Don’t spread lies.”

When the show returned, Brokaw finished his thought on the NRA. “The NRA likes to say, the best way to stop a man with a gun is another man with a gun. Well that is a kinda cover, it kind of seems for me,” he said. Later he added: ” ever expected, in my career as a correspondent, that at this stage of our lives, this is what we would be talking about.”

Earlier in the show, Kelly suggested that having stricter gun laws in the United States wouldn’t make a difference because this particular shooter exhibited no “red flags.”

“Even if [gun laws] did change, you would still get people like this guy and we know it. From the look of things, this is a guy who was a lone shooter, no history of violence, no record, no red flags, no anything,” she said. “No anything in this case, not yet anyway. A retired accountant who had a girlfriend, who was supposedly happy, decided to murder a group of innocent people here in the land of the free. So how exactly do we make sense of that?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=116&v=uS7RsFp7EqY

States with stricter gun laws have less gun deaths per year, according to Mother Jones. And in Australia, which enforced stricter gun laws in the 1990s after recognizing a mass shooting problem of its own, has seen a dramatic decline in gun-related deaths since those laws were passed. According to the United Nations, the United States has more than 21 times the firearms deaths of that country.

People on Twitter expressed anger at Kelly’s suggestions.

You can watch Kelly’s comments in the video above, and the exchange with Brokaw at the top of this post.

https://twitter.com/TheClintonBunch/status/915226132793892864

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