Megyn Kelly is furious that Americans aren't acting to stop school shootings.
On her show Thursday during a passionate monologue, the NBC host denounced America's willingness to allow children to die in preventable school shootings.
"There have been at least 12, at least 12, school shootings in America so far in 2018. It’s February 15th," Kelly explained. "We're averaging one just about every three or four days. How are we doing America? Everyone okay with that?"
As Kelly pointed out, Americans apparently are okay with this, since no substantive gun control legislation has been passed on the federal level, despite the wave of school shootings. After denouncing the meaningless cycle of hand-wringing and apologies that inevitably follow these shootings — and which never lead to policy changes that could prevent them — Kelly predicted that Americans would continue cravenly mouthing platitudes in order to avoid confronting the powerful forces in this country that allow these tragedies to keep happening.
“I don’t believe in a single one of these politicians,” Kelly said. “I don’t believe any of them have the courage it takes to actually push through [gun] reform.”
She added, “No gun reforms are getting through. They’re not. And most of the ones that will be proposed in the wake of this shooting will be utterly meaningless and wouldn’t have even arguably prevented this killing. The NRA is too powerful. Our politicians are too weak. And the guns are too ubiquitous.”
She also made it clear that Americans couldn't simply blame their politicians who had failed to act.
"It's not all on them. Because we the people are the ones who hire and fire these politicians, so if we don't get serious, neither will they," Kelly told her audience.
She then remembered how, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, people predicted that would be "the one" which forced stricter gun control policies. Instead, there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America since then, roughly one per week.
"If twenty dead first graders don't spur people to action, what will?" Kelly asked.
After describing how the emphasis on mental illness is misplaced — noting that most mentally ill people do not commit acts of violence and that it would be both morally perilous and politically impractical to start loosening the rules regarding involuntary commitment — she then noted that because the NRA is so powerful and Congress is in its pocket, gun control legislation has been taken off the table.
"I wish I had the solution," Kelly concluded, holding back tears. "One part of it is courage. To get honest. To give a damn. To maybe take that $25 billion for the border wall and, as my friend Geraldo Rivera suggested, redirect it toward this problem."
She added, "How about showing any resolve at all? Any resolve at all to actually solve this problem? Wouldn't that be a start?"
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