Joy Behar is pretty tired of gun advocates and conservative lawmakers citing mental health as the core driver behind gun violence in the United States. In her eyes, it’s actually “an irrelevant point.”
On Wednesday’s show, the women of “The View” once again dug in on what they feel needs to be done to stop the frequency of mass shootings in the country, following the horrific events in Uvalde, Texas last week. To kick off the show, the hosts mocked the many reasons conservatives have tried to place blame on, including marijuana, “teaching wokeness” and more.
“It’s not any of those things!” Whoopi Goldberg said exasperatedly. “You can put it through a BS lens if you want to, and keep pretending like you don’t know we have an issue with an assault weapon — and this will be the last I have to say on it. This weapon, you cannot hunt with it. You cannot go bird hunting with it. It is made to kill and destroy bodies.”
When the discussion eventually came to Joy Behar, she admitted that she’s less optimistic than she was just a day ago about common sense gun laws getting passed, specifically because of Mitch McConnell.
“He reported the senators are trying to target the problem, he said, which he identified as mental illness and school safety,” Behar quoted. “He never mentioned the word ‘guns,’ and that, to me, as you said before, particularly those semi-automatics, are just weapons of mass destruction. And he just ignores that.”
Behar then criticized McConnell for voting against a bill that would prevent people on terrorism watchlists from gaining access to weapons.
“Who is more suicidal than these terrorists who flew their planes into the World Trade Center? And we know that when they are suicidal, you cannot control them,” she continued. “And yet this guy, this so-called senator, who actually represent people of his state, and a lot of the people in this country because of his position in the senate, votes against a bill that would stop terrorists from getting ammunition and guns!”
Host Sara Haines agreed, noting that every time there is a mass shooting — particularly at a school — “the left goes to the gun, and the right goes to mental health.” Haines also noted that the left the tries to legislate, and argued the right actually defunds mental health initiatives. And at that, Behar got even angrier.
“Sara, we both know, and everybody knows that mentally ill people are everywhere in the world,” Behar snapped. “This is the only country where they shoot people. So stop with the mental health! It’s an irrelevant point.”
Sunny Hostin then added a statistic she regularly reminds people of, which notes that “mentally ill people are 10 times more likely to be the victims of crime, rather than to perpetrate crime.”