MSNBC Host To Rick Santorum: What Are You Doing About ‘White Men With Guns’?

[SummerSnow]

BY JUDD LEGUM DEC 21, 2015 9:00 AM

This morning on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough asked Rick Santorum a simple question: What can we do to show the millions of peaceful Muslim Americans that they are valued and respected members of society?
Santorum rejected the question and said that onus was on every Muslim American to confront “the cancer within Islam.” Santorum said that “most Muslims” in America were shirking their duties to confront radicalism.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski had enough. “I’ll turn the argument around on you. Why aren’t you working on white men with guns?,” she asked.
“You are telling Muslim Americans they all need to come out and talk about the tiny percentage of their community that has kind of, quite frankly, wreaked havoc. But yet, you look at the data of white men wreaking havoc on this country? Why aren’t white men coming forward? Why don’t you call on them to do that?,” Brzezinski continued.
Santorum responded by saying he was dealing with the problem of “gun violence.” Not by supporting any kind of gun safety legislation but by encouraging people to get married.

Brzezinski is right on the data. Since 9/11, fatalities from attacks by right-wing extremists — a group of almost exclusively white men — has accounted for 254 fatalities. Meanwhile, Islam-inspired attacks accounted for 50 fatalities over the same period. (This data was from June so did not include the recent attacks in Colorado and San Bernardino.)
Prejudice against Muslims in America is not without consequences. ThinkProgress has documented 46 anti-Islam incidents, many of them violent, since the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Santorum criticized the Obama and George W. Bush administrations for being too accommodating toward Muslims.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/12/21/3734185/msnbc-hosts-expose-santorums-hypocrisy-on-muslims-what-are-you-doing-about-white-men-with-guns/?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000079

*Oh wow*

[hack89]

1. Introducing race into the gun control argument can be tricky.

you don't really want race based solutions.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Guilt by association is crap was the main point

Well done by Mika. You don't have to squirm every time someone makes a nasty about guns.

[hack89]

5. I understand that

however, we had a DU thread on how toxic and dangerous white men are that turned into a white gun owner bashing thread.

[Lizzie Poppet]

8. Yep. In fact, it's a supremely bad idea.

"Ammunition for racists" is about as mildly as one can put it.

[Photographer]

2. K&R

I'd say more but afraid to be alerted on.

[justgamma]

4. So married people don't kill people.

Why didn't somebody think of this sooner? What a dolt.

[CTyankee]

7. I really believe the guy was just throwing out any of his RW rhetoric to fit the moment.

He looked bizarre. But then they all do to me...

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. Frothy Santorum is glad that the San Bernardino couple were married. Would be worse otherwise. nt

[3catwoman3]

6. Sanctimonious Santorum thinks...

...marriage is the answer to everything.

[saltpoint]

9. Santorum is not necessarily the

smartest guy in the room, but he's perceptive enough to know what works and what doesn't work.

So he continually surprises me when he says such incredibly stupid things.

His campaign against Romney failed badly and this one barely even registers on the radar at all. And the campaign he ran earlier for re-election to the Senate ended in a landslide vote against him.

I would just add on a personal note that I have disliked Rick Santorum for some long time now and have absolutely no objective opinion of his career. I think he's a humorless prick, and the sooner he is retired by voters into oblivion, the better.

[Gman]

10. They're usually divorced (little wonder)

Or losers who could never develop a relationship.

[Dont call me Shirley]

11. What about the cancer that is your own brand of fundamentalist Christianity, Rick? Don't you then

have a responsibility to root out your own mental cancer?

[Omaha Steve]

12. Thanks for posting

K&R

OS

[Warren DeMontague]

14. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess he blames internet porn and legal pot, next

Maybe no prayer in public schools.

[libodem]

15. Yup

Sounds right.