In the months between the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and the failed April 17 vote on Senate gun control, Joe Scarborough used his MSNBC program to push gun control and criticize the NRA at every turn in the road. But it wasn’t always this way—Scarborough once praised the NRA with the same tenacity he now shows in criticizing it.
This was especially true while Scraborough was a Congressman (R-FL), 1995-2003.
The Daily Caller has dug up his responses to NRA candidate questionaires from “August 23, 1994, September 2, 1994, and June 7, 2000,” and in them Scarborough expressed vehement opposition to any further federal gun controls.
Scarborough felt so strongly about these things that wrote the following on a 1994 questionaire in the blank space provided:
The NRA must elect & support candidates who will view the gun rights issue as a constitutional battle. The Founding Fathers did not give us the 2nd Amendment to protect our rights to shoot ducks. Our constitutional right to bear arms is so we may protect our family in the manner we choose. No Compromise!
In the two 1994 questionaires, Scarborough also alluded to the fact that the term “assault weapons” is used by the government as a catch-all phrase for anything they want to ban. Thus, when asked to define what he believed the federal government meant by “assault weapons” he answered: “Anything the government would fear the people could use to protect their rights.”
In 2000, after the 1994 “assault weapons” ban had been in place for 6 years without any noticeable impact on crime, Scarborough also indicated he agreed with the NRA’s position that the ban should sunset in 2004.
The bottom line–Scarborough was for the NRA before he was against it.
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