MSNBC’s Reid: Fox News Is Making America ‘Heavily Armed and Paranoid’

MSNBC host Joy Reid said Wednesday on her show “The ReidOut” that Fox News is making Americans “paranoid,” which causes them to get firearms.

Reid said, “It’s actually not uncommon to knock on someone’s door, at least, it shouldn’t be. Plenty of folks knock on doors. The Girl Scouts used to do it during cookie fundraising season sometimes little kids selling candy bars, census workers, salespeople and election years, those essential election canvassers maybe a community member running for office. That part of American life, it seems dead these days, doesn’t it? I mean, who would feel comfortable doing any of that with the tragedies that we so often hear about a 16-year-old boy shot for going to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers, a 20-year-old woman shot dead after her boyfriend pulled into the driveway of a home they mistakenly believed belonged to a friend. And now, two Texas cheerleaders shot, one critically after one of them mistakenly got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot. This is, at least the third time in a week, that a young American was met with gunfire for making an apparent mistake. There’s this running theme in America today where so many people walking around or behind those neighborhood doors are so heavily armed and paranoid. And more and more of these people feel increasingly empowered to shoot people based off this constant fear that danger is lurking everywhere. I wonder where that paranoia seems to be coming from? Thinking, thinking, thinking.”

After running clips of Fox News hosts talking about crime, Reid said, “What we are seeing is the outgrowth of Fox and other right wing message constant message that people who don’t look like you or worship like you are out to get you. When you combine that with a country that has more guns in civilian hands than any other on Earth, and NRA-backed laws that encourage people to use them, well no wonder we can’t ring someone’s doorbell anymore.”

Reid added, “You have a good percentage of the country who own the preponderance of the weapons and firearms and who are mainlining things like Fox News, constantly saying Black Lives Matter is terroristic, black people are coming to get you. It’s all crime it’s all crime. What’s frightening about that is that the NRA has pushed these laws like stand your ground that I think have convinced people, we have always had racist people, now they think they can get away with shooting people because of those laws.”

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