When to Talk About Gun Control? Trevor Noah Blasts Fox News and Sean Hannity for Las Vegas Coverage
Comedian and Daily Show host Trevor Noah on Tuesday night blasted how Fox News has responded to the shooting in Las Vegas, focusing his brunt criticism on Sean Hannity, who boasted about his firearm training before lamenting that someone like him wasn't present to neutralize mass shooters.
"What stops a bad guy with a gun is a Sean Hannity with a gun," Noah joked.
Related: Now is the right time to talk about gun violence, says Kimmel
Much of the post-shooting discourse has revolved around the idea that such tragedies shouldn't be politicized so soon after they happen, and Fox News has been front and center in excoriating Democrats for calling for more gun control.
"Can we not have a day in which we mourn before we engage in a very divisive issue on which there's been no agreement in this country for a very long time?" asked Brit Hume in a Fox News clip shown by Noah.
But Noah suggested that Fox News's call not to politicize the tragedy may just be a way to buy time before they can figure out how to politicize it. The shooter was a white millionaire, after all. "We don't even know enough about him to hate him yet," said host Brian Kilmeade about gunman Stephen Paddock on Fox & Friends.
To prove his point, Noah showed clips of the same Fox News talking heads reacting to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, which was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history before the Vegas massacre. "In the wake of this attack, you wonder whether people like that should be coming here," Hume said at the time, having no problem raising a highly political, highly divisive talking point right after the attack. (The attacker he was referring to, Omar Mateen, had stated his allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.)
Noah then shifted his focus to the biggest target of all at Fox News: Hannity. Instead of dismissing the idea of even bringing up gun control, Hannity engaged in the debate. "I've always been a big believer in that you always have to be prepared to defend yourself," the host said. "I've had gun permits in New York and Rhode Island and California and Alabama and Georgia. I was trained in the use of a firearm by my parents, who had connections to law enforcement."
Many gun rights advocates believe that if more people were armed, the death tolls from mass shootings would be reduced. But in the case of Las Vegas, no armed civilian would likely have been able to take out Paddock, as he fired down on a crowd of people from 400 yards away, up on the 32nd floor of a hotel.
But that didn't stop Hannity from making the argument. "This guy has got a machine gun," the host said. "How are they going to take him on without a weapon? Or if it's happening within a crowd, if it's happening in San Bernardino, do you want Sean Hannity, who is trained in the safety and use of a firearm, in that room, so when they drop the clip and start to reload you've got a chance?"
Noah was not the only late-night host to take on the gun issue in the aftermath of the Las Vegas tragedy. Also on Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel attacked the "nuts" who think it is too soon to talk about gun control. Stephen Colbert also addressed the issue. "[Republican politicians] always say that a gun tragedy is never the right time to talk about how to stop the next gun tragedy," he said Tuesday night. "It's like your alcoholic uncle wrapping his car around a tree, getting out and saying, 'Today is not the day to talk about my drinking, OK?'"
Late-night hosts are increasingly less afraid to get political. Kimmel, Colbert and Seth Meyers, all of whom have prime-slots on network TV, excoriate the president on a nightly basis. Kimmel has recently taken it beyond comedy, delivering impassioned monologues on the recent health care debate and, now, the shooting in Las Vegas.
"I want this to be a comedy show," he said Monday night. "I hate talking about stuff like this." However, he added, "it's becoming increasingly difficult lately."
