Stephen Colbert dropped the jokes at the top of his Late Show monologue Tuesday night to spend a few minutes talking about the “familiar and horrible” mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. After noting that it was the 130th mass shooting of 2023, the host pointed out that 2023 “is only 87 days old.”
“Not doing anything about this is an insane dereliction of our collective humanity,” Colbert continued. “And the obvious solution here is one President Biden has proposed, an assault weapons ban.” He cited a study that found during the previous ban, the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower in America than it is today.
“That just makes sense,” he said. “Fewer guns means fewer shootings. It might be hard, but it’s not complicated.”
Colbert went on to accuse Republicans in Congress of being “desperate” to talk about “anything else.” And in particular, he highlighted the recent comments from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), who declared that “we’re not gonna fix it” because “criminals are gonna be criminals.”
“I suppose as a lawmaker he could, I don’t know, make a law, but that sounds like a lot of work,” Colbert replied. “Despair is so much more efficient.”
And when it came to Burchett’s analogy between school shootings and his father’s experience in the Second World War, Colbert said, “Counterpoint: Elementary school is not supposed to be like World War II.”
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