MSNBC reporter/Anchor Craig Melvin is a lovely human being — no sarcasm — but he has no business reporting hard news on life-and-death issues. He goes along to get along, and that’s not the kind of “journalism” needed when public figures deliver b.s. to his face.
Today he was in Las Vegas interviewing Andy Card — George Bush’s former Chief of Staff. Card actually said that he could not see how any kind of gun safety law could have possibly have prevented the massacre at Mandalay Bay. He then implied that the only kind of gun safety proposal on the table was background checks.
Melvin let Card get away with this. He did not challenge him and ask:
- what about a law that registered military-style assault weapons — which would have thrown up a flag when it became clear that one man was stockpiling this kind of weaponry.
- what about a law that made it illegal to sell or possess “conversion kits” that turn semi-automatic assault weapons into machine guns
- what about a law that said if collectors and hobbyists wanted to own assault rifles, those rifles had to be stored under lock ant a gun-club target range — with severe individual penalties for any clubs that transgressed?
Other industrial countries outlaw this kind of weapon, and other countries do not have this kind of slaughter. In spite of that, Melvin let Card get away unchallenged with the bullsh*t NRA talking point that regulating military assault weapons is ineffective and useless.
I have nothing against Craig Melvin. I wish him well. He seems like a very nice person. But interviews like this should be handled by hard-edged journalists like Katy Tur, Rachael Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Joy Reid, Ali Velshi or Stephanie Rhule (to name a few… there are dozens) — and Craig Melvin should be reassigned to covering solar eclipses and the Kardashians, because he has no instincts for speaking uncomfortable truths to power.