Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Jon Stewart mocks Alex Jones rant: Guns needed to fight ‘imaginary Hitler’

On his show Tuesday night, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart expressed his bafflement over conservatives who refused to even consider any new restrictions on gun ownership in the wake of multiple mass shootings.

He noted that conservatives had blamed gun violence on movies, video games, mental health, and even sin.

“Is this about me masturbating?” Stewart joked. “Look, I didn’t know that that was considered a national issue.”

The late-night comedian mocked politicians and others who claimed that numerous gun laws already existed, saying that McDonald’s hot coffee was more regulated than firearms.

“Why is it that there is no other issue in this country with as dire public safety consequences as this that we are unable to make even the most basic steps towards putting together a complex plan of action to slow this epidemic spread? What is really going on here?”

For Stewart, Alex Jones’ crazed rant about gun rights on CNN seemed to sum up the die-hard opposition to gun control. For conspiratorial gun advocates like Jones, absolute tyranny was the inevitable result of anything other than unlimited access to firearms.

“No one is taking away all the guns,” Stewart said. “But now I get it. Now I see what is happening. So this is what it is, their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present. We can’t even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths that are actually in reality happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of imaginary Hitler.”

Watch video, via Comedy Central, below:

Part One:

Part Two: