December 17, 2012

Joe Scarborough Says the Sandy Hook Massacre “Changed Everything”


Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough came out forcefully against the gun lobby, saying that Friday’s horrifying shooting in Connecticut changes everything including his past views on gun control.

Scarborough said that while he once viewed gun control as a “powerful, symbolic” struggle between big government and individual rights. Now he sees the issue as a matter of public safety.

“The ideologies of my past career are no longer relevant to the future that I want, to the future that I demand for my children, ” Scarborough said in his eight-minute monologue on the tragedy.

Scarborough added that it’s time to stop fighting endless wars overseas while we face shooting after shooting here at home, in theaters, schools, and other public places.

As Andy Kroll noted earlier today, Scarborough joins a rising chorus of conservative voices no longer content with the status quo, including conservative Democrat Joe Manchin.

I don’t agree with everything in Scarborough’s monologue. 

Mental illness is a serious problem that needs to be addressed along with the broader issue of access to health care and public health, but mental illness is widespread in other nations which have no similar history of mass shootings. The same is true for violent images in pop culture and violent video games which are played across Europe and Asia with no similar impact on public safety.

In other words, the real problem is that America has been saturated with far too many assault weapons and other militarized weapons, and these weapons are far too easy for people with mental illness to gain access to.

I’m glad to see Scarborough and other conservatives come out in favor of better gun control laws and attention to mental-health issues, because those two issues ought to be front and center following this latest shooting. 

Censoring speech rather than regulating assault weapons, extended magazines, and access to firearms would fail to address the core problems that lead to so many tragedies and so many lost lives in this country, year after bloody year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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