Hours after The View’s Meghan McCain warned that there would be “lots of violence” if the American government enforced mandatory gun buybacks, Fox News host Tucker Carlson took that argument even further on Tuesday night and claimed buybacks would lead to a “civil war.”
Following yet another mass shooting in Texas this past weekend, Carlson led off his Tuesday night primetime program by blasting Democratic calls for mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons. (The Odessa shooter used an AR-15, a weapon that has become commonplace in mass shootings.)
“They are not buying them back,” Carlson grumbled. “It’s gun confiscation. Nothing but that. An attempt to eliminate a constitutional right the ruling class finds inconvenient.”
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“It won’t reduce gun violence,” the right-wing cable news host continued. “In fact, sending armed authorities door-to-door to seize people’s lawfully owned weapons is a sure-fire recipe for causing violence. If you cared about America and the people who live here, you would not suggest that. But they don’t hesitate.”
Carlson went on to grouse some more over Democrats pointing the finger at firearms and high-capacity magazines and clips as a root cause of America’s gun violence problem, bringing on a former Army ranger to back up his criticisms. The Fox host then brought on Democratic strategist Bernard Whitman to debate the merits of buybacks and gun reform in general, resulting in a predictably heated exchange.
After Whitman pointed out that the vast majority of American citizens support universal background checks—the Odessa shooter failed a federal background check—Carlson pivoted back to buybacks, insisting they would result in war.
“What you are calling for is civil war,” Carlson exclaimed, noting that several 2020 candidates support buybacks. “What you are calling for is an incitement to violence. It’s something—I wouldn’t want to live here when that happened, would you?!”
The Fox host went on to allege that this was really about the ruling class punishing and attacking rural America, adding that “there is no violent crime in most places where everyone owns a gun.”
