“SNL” made light of the on-going gun control debate in America Saturday with a sketch that took the National Rifle Association’s logic for stopping mass shootings and applying it to bugs.
Host Charles Barkley played Ned, a business owner appearing in a commercial about helping people rid their homes of cockroaches. Instead of selling poisons or harmful chemicals, though, Ned offered a different solution — Ned’s Roach Away, with the acronym “NRA” highlighted in red.
Ned’s way of dealing with cockroach infestations, he explained, was to train “good roaches” to carry tiny AR-15 rifles and to use them against cockroaches in clients’ homes. You can watch the sketch in the video above.
Barkley’s Ned echoed NRA talking points that usually follow mass shootings in America, including the one last month that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Students who survived the shooting have reignited the gun control debate, speaking out about the need for tougher laws.
In the sketch, Ned’s armed roaches take up residence in clients’ houses, killing off all the “bad roaches” and riddling the house with tiny bullet holes. The good roaches even train their babies to carry guns and fight bad roaches, “continuing the cycle,” Ned says.
President Trump echoed the “only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun “sentiment following the Parkland shooting, saying some teachers should be allowed to bring guns to school under concealed carry permits so they could fire back at any would-be school shooters.
Trump also said after the shooting that even if he were unarmed, he believed he would run toward a school shooter and try to stop him. “SNL” spoofed the comment during its cold open, with Alec Baldwin’s Trump saying he would run in to stop a school shooting, and then run all the way to North Korea to confront “Little Rocket Man.”