Trevor Noah Reacts to Las Vegas Shooting: ‘When Is the Time’ to Talk About Guns?

Think about this for a second. Trevor Noah has been living in New York and hosting The Daily Show for two years. In that time, the United States has had at least 20 headline-grabbing mass shootings.

“They say that this was the worst in American history,” Noah said of the Las Vegas attack at the top of his show Monday night. “But every shooting is the worst for someone.” He said he feels like people are “becoming more accustomed” to these types of stories, to the point where he knows exactly how things will play out.

“We’re shocked, we’re sad, thoughts and prayers, and then almost on cue, people are going to come out saying, whatever you do, when speaking about the shooting, don’t talk about guns,” Noah said before playing a clip of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying this is “not the time” to talk about gun-control measures that might have stopped this shooting.

“When is the time?” Noah asked. “If you say after a mass shooting is never the time, then you will never have the conversation in America, because there’s a mass shooting almost every single day. So when is the time?”

When a plane crashes, the host said, “we talk about plane safety immediately.” When a bridge collapses, we talk about “infrastructure.” And, “When a lion attacks people, we talk about why are there so many lions roaming around? Is that just me? Africa?”

“I’ve never been to a country where people are as afraid to speak about guns. Every time there’s a shooting, you’ve got to look at something else,” Noah remarked, pointing to Muslims or “black-on-black crime” or mental illness or white nationalists. This time, he said, some people are even asking, “Is it hotels?”

“Just to give you an idea of how far America is from actual gun control, this week Congress is going to vote on deregulating gun silencers,” Noah said of a controversial bill that just got a lot more attention than it otherwise would have. “Because I guess Congress is thinking, gun violence is out of control, how can we make it quieter?”

Noah said he could not give his “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the shooting, but instead only an apology. “I’m sorry that we live in a world where there are people who will put a gun before your lives,” he said.