Following Saturday’s shooting in Monterey Park, California, in which 10 people were killed and 10 more were wounded, “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough led a segment Monday breaking down the continued and historic gun violence in the United States.
Introducing the segment, Brzezinski broke mass shootings down by the numbers. In 2023 (in other words, in the last three weeks alone), there have been 33 mass shootings. Noting that a mass shooting is defined by having at least four people injured or killed, Brzezinski added that there were 648 cases in 2022, doubling the number since 2018.
Saturday’s mass shooting in Monterey Park was the deadliest since the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022. In all, citing Pew Research, Brzezinski concluded that gun deaths have spiked massively in recent years and have seen a 49% increase in the last five years and a 75% increase in the last 10.
“Suffice it to say,” she said, “there are developed countries that don’t have this problem, Joe.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Scarborough then jumped in, emphasizing that “most” developed countries don’t come anywhere near the U.S. when it comes to gun violence stats.
“If you look at the numbers and compare for developed countries, Western developed countries, nobody comes close to the number of people killed per 100,000 per capita, as is the case here in America,” he said. “I mean, these numbers are unbelievable.”
Scarborough then explained, as he believed many who watch the program already know, that he is pro guns and himself a self-proclaimed “gun guy.” But he blamed members of the Republican Party at large for refusing to come to the table and negotiate common sense gun reform.
“I don’t have to tell anybody that watches the show regularly, I don’t wanna ban guns, I’m a gun guy, I have several guns, I’m comfortable around guns,” Scarborough said. “I’ve grown up in gun culture, I’ve grown up in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. I get it.
“But I don’t get this,” he continued. “I don’t get when murders by guns go up 50% in the past five years, Republicans wanna do nothing about it. I don’t get how when murders by guns go up 75% over the past 10 years, Republicans wanna do nothing about it.”
He clarified that he usually refrains from saying “Republicans” generally and instead cites MAGA or Trump Republicans, but that “here, it’s the Republican party that other than the 10 senators that stepped in and actually tried to pass some meaningful, positive breakthroughs in gun safety laws” who are to blame.
“The proliferation of guns continues, the shootings continue to explode,” he said.
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.