Paul Ryan (CBS News)
On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) cautioned against "knee-jerk" reactions that would "take away a citizen's rights" to own guns after yet another mass shooter killed people using an easy-to-acquire semi-automatic weapon in Florida yesterday.
"If that sounds familiar," MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted, "it is because it is."
The host proceeded to play clips of the House speaker using nearly the exact same phrase after multiple past mass shootings.
"You have to think these things through before we just have knee-jerk reactions," Ryan said in a post-San Bernardino massacre clip.
After a shooter killed nine people in Roseburg, Oregon in 2015, Ryan also argued against "knee-jerk reactions" that would supposedly infringe on Second Amendment gun rights, instead focusing on the "underlying factor" of mental illness.
"Ah yes, mental illness," Hayes said. "You'll see a lot of Republicans talking about mental illness."
Indeed, President Donald Trump's post-Parkland massacre statement focused solely on mental illness and did not mention guns at all. The statement is undermined, however, by Trump's own executive order, signed in February 2017, that makes it easier for people with histories of mental illness to purchase firearms.
Watch below, via MSNBC:
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