November 22, 2019

Fox Is Very Concerned That Impeachment Is Preventing Action on Gun Safety

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In a hard pivot from what you’d ordinarily see on Fox & Friends, host Ainsley Earhardt made a desperate plea on behalf of Americans everywhere Friday morning: “We want gun safety.” 

Earhardt was complaining about the impeachment hearings, making the argument that the time and attention spent investigating the Ukraine scandal was preventing Congress from moving forward on other important issues, like gun safety. To the tape: 

Let’s back up a second. After each of the countless mass shootings in recent years, when a majority of Americans call on Congress to strengthen gun control laws, Fox & Friends hasn’t exactly joined that chorus of calls. Here’s what Earhardt had to say about gun control laws after the El Paso shooting, nearly four months ago: 

And in September, Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, went on Fox & Friends to blame gun violence on “an absence of morality” and lack of religion, rather than loose gun laws.

Of course, impeachment isn’t the reason gun control legislation hasn’t moved. As Cydney Hargis, a researcher at Media Matters For America notes, the Democratic-controlled House has already passed gun control legislation, which Senate Republicans have refused to vote on. After an outbreak of mass shooting this summer, President Donald Trump promised to put forward his own gun control proposal. He has not done so.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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