Following the tragic deaths of nine black church-goers in Charleston at the hands of an alleged white supremacist, NBC host Chuck Todd featured a segment with only black murders who were regretful of using guns.
On Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, Todd kicked off a discussion about gun control with a video of convicted murderers at Sing Sing Correctional Facility talking about how they wished they had never picked up a gun.
"The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston," Todd explained. "In this case, in the inmates are African-American that you're going to hear from. But their lessons remain important."
"And we simply ask you to look at this as a color-blind issue that's about just simply gun violence," he added.
See also: NBC’s Chuck Todd defends using video of all-black murderers during panel on white Charleston shooter
Following the video clip of several tearful black men who said that they never intended to kill anyone when they picked up a gun, Todd returned to his panel of guests for comments.
"Passing a law isn't going to change the culture," Todd opined.
"But passing the right law -- passing a law that frankly we're not going to pass would take a lot of guns out of circulation, would make the gun not the normal thing one reaches for when one wants to aggrandize ones self-esteem," columnist Eugene Robinson argued.
Robinson agreed that the video of the black men had been "powerful," but he said that it did not fit the circumstances.
"There wasn't a terribly diverse set of people who were talking," the columnist observed. "Right now, we're talking about a horrific crime committed by a white man, we're talking about the search for two escaped murderers who are white men."
"So we should point out that this is not just an African-American problem."
"No, no, no, no," Todd replied. "And it wasn't intended to be that way."
Watch the video below from NBC, broadcast June 21, 2015.
