The Last Word   |  January 23, 2013

Rewriting the NRA's inaugural response

In a response to President Obama's inaugural address that MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell called "semi-coherent," NRA boss Wanye LaPierre cited a liberal Supreme Court Justice to aid his argument. O'Donnell explains how LaPierre is trying to rewrite history.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> last night at this hour, we went live to nevada to cover the washington lobbyists for mass murderers, wayne lapierre , delivering a similar rant against president obama 's second inaugural address .

>> >> i would like to talk to you about one line near the end of president obama , speech, where he said "we cannot mistake absolutism for principle." let me quote the president again. we cannot mistake absolutism for principle.

>> well, okay. but when i heard the president say that, gun control did not come to mind. i thought he was talking about modern-day republicans, which is to say neanderthal republicans, who will under no circumstances raise taxes or include spending on anything, except of course, when they increase spending on things that they like. crazy wayne quoted only one person to support his defense of absolutism. a supreme court justice . no, not anton scalia , the most conservative member of the court, because justice scalia disagrees with lapierre on the second amendment. he does not believe that the right to bear arms is absolute.

>> what limitations on the right to keep and bear arms are permissible. some are, because there were some that were acknowledged at the time.

>> no, there is nothing any current member of the supreme court has said that could help crazy wayne make his case last night. and so he reached all the way back to a supreme court justice who died 41 years ago, and was a liberal member of the supreme court , who if he were alive today would be a solid vote for gun control on the supreme court .

>> don't take it from me, take it from former democratic u.s. senator , and u.s. supreme court justice hugo black . 50 years ago, after he had been appointed to the united states supreme court by franklin roosevelt , liberal justice hugo black said, and i'm going to quote him right here for you. he said "there are absolutes in our bill of rights and they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be absolutes." end quote.

>> justice black said that in a very long lecture about the bill of rights at nyu law school in 1960 . but in that lecture where justice black said there are absolutes, he very specifically said the second amendment is not one of them. he pointed out that the supreme court in a unanimous decision that included his vote, had already restricted the second amendment to not include the right to have a machine gun , or a sawed off shot gun, the favorite tools of bank robbers and gangsters at the time. and so crazy wayne was not standing on the liberalism of justice hugo black last night. he would have been upset to see his words manipulated by the lobbyists, who make sure that when mass murderers enter the shopping malls and areas, they will be able to fire as many bullets as possible without reloading.

>> we believe that if neither the criminal nor the political class and their body guards and security people are limited by magazine capacity, we shouldn't be limited in our capacity either.

>> crazy wayne is constantly comparing nra members and gun owners tonight, in his speech, to try to make it appear that justice black agreed with wayne lapierre , in any way, that was a crime against