For the first time in a long time, Stephen Colbert opened The Late Show Tuesday night with a solemn message about yet another mass shooting in the United States.
“Yesterday was another dark day for America when a sniper entered a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, and killed 10 people, including a police officer,” he began. “This story is indescribably tragic and I cannot imagine for a moment the pain of these families.” The “only appropriate way to honor these victims is with action,” added Colbert. “But our government is still doing nothing.”
Partly due to the COVID-19 shutdowns, it has been a year since the country saw a mass shooting in a public place like the two that were committed in Atlanta and Boulder last week. “Of course, the only solution to armed violence in America is to put us all under house arrest,” he said.
From there, Colbert turned to “predictable” responses from “arms apologists” like the Colorado State Shooting Association, which said in a statement: “There will be a time for the debate over gun laws. There will be a time for a conversation about how this could have been avoided. But today is not the time. “
“Why not?!” Colbert fired back. “That’s what they say every time it happens. And that’s what I say about what they say every time they say it every time it happens. “
“Another arms fetishist weighing on the tragedy is Colorado’s representative and John Wick’s HR supervisor, Lauren Boebert,” added the presenter, pointing to a tweet from a non-QA congresswoman who said, in part, “While we are awaiting important information and details in this case, random public shootings and senseless violence are never OK. “
“Where does she find courage?” Colbert asked. “’Acts of senseless violence are never allowed’, which implies, of course, that intentional violence is okay. You know, the kind that her friends plan on in Parler.
But he did not finish, facing Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), who argued on Tuesday that America does not have an arms control problem, but an “idiot control problem”.
“Oh, we definitely have a stupid control problem,” Colbert replied. “They are people who do not recognize that this country has long had problems with weapons, John Kennedy. So when idiots like John Kennedy refuse to do anything to get rid of idiotic weapons, it’s clearly time to get rid of idiots like John Kennedy. And that means voting for them! “
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