Meghan McCain Came So Close to Making Sense Today

Today on All My Moms, sometimes referred to as The View, panelist Meghan McCain did what she does best: almost make a decent point, but undermine it before she gets very far.

During the show’s Hot Topics segment, the panel reflected on last Friday’s mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas. Joy Behar made a reference to “the very famous thinker” Malcolm Gladwell, who posited that every school shooting makes another one more likely, and that only the “strictest” gun reform laws can put an end to America’s worst recurring tragedy.

Then McCain jumped in. She asked if this Gladwell character actually owned a gun, because apparently only people who own guns can speak to whether or not reform can keep students from being murdered at school? She later continued, via Mediaite:

“We’re always talking about gun control and we said before, that, OK, AR-15s, all semi-assault rifles, if they are banned, this won’t happen. That is obviously not accurate in this case. He, by the way, also had a pipe bomb, a Molotov cocktail and a carbon dioxide device, which by the way are things you can make in your house as well…things you can find off the internet.”

So close and yet so far. For a brief moment McCain appeared to flirt with the prospect of having more extensive gun control laws by positing that banning only assault rifles won’t stop school shootings—which is true!—but she didn’t quite make it. She also failed to mention that the explosives that shooting suspect Dimitrios Pagourtzis rigged were deemed “nonfunctional.”

Then it seemed like McCain was maybe going to do something else interesting (I can never quite tell if she’s being earnest or sassy) because she brought up Kelly Clarkson, who paid tribute to the Santa Fe victims at last night’s Billboard Music Awards. Clarkson tearfully implored the audience to “do a moment of action” or a “moment of change” without so much as mentioning the word “gun.” Which is not good enough!

As the New York Times and also McCain pointed out, Clarkson has a concealed handgun license and has said she owns nine guns and sleeps with a Colt 45 (the gun, not the alcohol). It would have been really helpful to know what, in her eyes, “action” or “change” looks like. Was this a brief moment where McCain was going to make sense and ask these important questions?

No. Because it’s Meghan McCain on The View, she immediately went to the extreme, saying, “I’m curious, someone like that, are you now for repealing the Second Amendment? I get it, a call to action, but what do you mean, Kelly?”