Newtown shooter Adam Lanza would have killed just as many children at Sandy Hook Elementary using a handgun as he did using a Bushmaster rifle, gun rights advocate Emily Miller declared Thursday.
Newtown shooter Adam Lanza would have killed just as many children at Sandy Hook Elementary using a handgun as he did using a Bushmaster rifle, gun rights advocate Emily Miller said Thursday on Morning Joe.
Miller, a senior opinion editor at the Washington Times, joined the show to discuss her new book “Emily Gets Her Gun…But Obama Wants to Take Yours.”
The talk began with Miller offering details from her book: stating her reasons for purchasing a gun–a home invasion–and the length of time it took to purchase what she called a “legal gun” (four months) and ended with a discussion on Newtown, background checks and the National Firearms Act.
“If Lanza went in with a handgun instead of a Bushmaster and started firing–,” Joe Scarborough began.
“He would have killed just as many kids unfortunately,” Miller followed.
Scarborough disagreed with Miller’s comment.
“The AR-15s and the ‘military assault weapons’ and these ‘military style’ ones that everyone’s scared of…they are 100 percent not any functionally different than a hunting rifle,” she countered. “Nothing. They just look like military rifles.”
Twenty children and six school staff members died during the Dec. 12 Newtown shootings, and a national debate on gun reform began immediately after. The shootings struck a personal chord with Scarborough who said he rethought his belief on gun rights in the moments following Newtown. On the Monday following the shootings, Scarborough opened the show with a powerful monologue on why it was time for Congress to put children before deadly dogmas.”
Miller’s interview on the show also took place days before the Sept. 16, 2013 Washington Navy Yard shooting, but was aired on Thursday, October 10.