Samantha Bee began Wednesday’s Full Frontal with a celebration of the previous night’s electoral victories for Democrats. “Damn, Virginia, you look good today!” she exclaimed. “Did you lose some dead weight?”
But “as great as these victories feel, they only matter if we use them to fight important battles,” Bee said. “And after the week we’ve had, there is nothing more important to me than gun control. Look, I would love to not talk about gun massacres but we can’t ignore them. That’s Congress’ job.”
“How is it not the time?” she asked in response to conservative talking points. “Ninety-three Americans a day die from gun violence. It’s like if a scary clown was killing 93 people per day and Congress was like, ‘It’s not the right time to talk about the clown.’”
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But Bee was particularly put off by all the talk of “thoughts and prayers” following the latest mass shooting in Texas. “I’m sorry, but unless you’re praying to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and these mass shootings are human sacrifices, your thoughts and prayers are not working,” she said. “Now, I don’t want to belittle the devout beliefs of Second Amendment enthusiasts. We all know God wants us to have guns. He says it right there in the Nine Commandments. But ‘thoughts and prayers’ are not a substitute for action. And pretty much all Americans want action on this.”
“Come on, responsible gun owners, you are better than this!” Bee said in response to the “face of the NRA,” a.k.a. “scary Selena Gomez, Dana Loesch. “America’s gun obsession is literally killing us.”
“Look, the Republican Party has completely bought into the myth that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” she added. “But that is not fair to ask of our nation’s many good guys. Good guys should be helping people move couches and lending you their Netflix password. They shouldn’t have to risk their lives in a church parking lot to protect the world from a monster.”
To any legislators who fell asleep watching The Big Bang Theory and happened to be watching her show on TBS, Bee said, “America appreciates your thoughts and prayers, but we need more than that. So while you’re all praying for God’s help, all we can do is pray for yours.”
