16
9
MSNBC analyst Steve Schmidt claimed Friday it's harder to buy cough medicine in America than to buy 50 AK-47 assault rifles.
Appearing as a panelist on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," Schmidt stepped into a discussion on gun control and the Second Amendment in the wake of last Sunday's Las Vegas massacre with this odd statement.
Following up fellow MSNBC analyst Harold Ford, Jr., Schmidt said the country's founding fathers could no more conceive of AK-47s or AR-15s capable of automatic fire than "they could've conceived a spaceship," Mediaite reports.
"These weapons were not conceived of, were not understood, were not imagined in the context of the time when the amendment was authored, and we ought to have a real debate in this country about whether we want military weapons, weapons of war in the hand of every Joe who wants to go in and buy 30 of them," Schmidt said.
"It is harder to buy cough medicine than it is to buy an AK-47 or 50 of them," he added.
This claim is inaccurate, but the crowd applauded and no one on the panel challenged it.