MSNBC's Joe Scarborough unloads on the NRA after the Parkland school shooting: 'This madness must stop'

Mika Brzezinski started off Thursday's Morning Joe by recapping Wednesday's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which a lone gunman killed 17 people. "Mika, here we are again," Joe Scarborough said, listing off some statistics: more than 33,000 people killed by guns in the U.S. each year, 1,607 mass shootings and 430 people shot in schools since the 2012 murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, "where we said 'never again.'" Three of the 10 deadliest shootings in U.S. history were in the last five months, he said, and 15 of the 20 worst U.S. mass shootings have been since the Columbine massacre in 1999.

America is still traumatized by the 58,800 Americans who died needlessly in Vietnam, Scarborough said, but "more people will die in America this year and next than died in a decade in Vietnam. And yet, Congress does nothing. The president does nothing. Washington does nothing to protect our children from this continued madness, and protect the rest of us from this insanity."

People who grew up around guns and take their kids hunting support stricter background checks and other gun laws, Scarborough said. "The NRA that we grew up with, that NRA is no longer interested in protecting gun rights. They're interested in promoting gun sales. I'm all for gun rights — I'm for the Second Amendment," he added, explaining how he's further right on guns than most of his viewers, "but the insanity that we have seen had to be curbed, and it has to be stopped. And don't tell me that you need military-style assault weapons to protect your home or to go hunting — you do not, and this madness must stop." Brzezinski told any guests expecting to argue that if now's not the time to talk about gun laws and other solutions they should just turn around and drive home. Watch below. Peter Weber

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