On Wednesday, Ted Cruz was on Morning Joe to debate gun control and what Cruz did to Scarborough is a felony in at least twenty-three states and two territories.Before we go any further, let’s recall that Joe Scarborough, back when he was trying to get elected to Congress, touted his 100% NRA rating. It is only in his new life as MSNBC’s “house” conservative that he’s become just another anti-gun Nazi.

SCARBOROUGH:It actually, the studies, even the Pentagon studies show that weapons like the AR-15 actually are designed to be more lethal, and there were actually — and I’ve talked about the article a good bit. There’s an article in the Atlantic in 1981, where actually, they did an after-action report, and there was criticism that a gun much like the AR-15 wasn’t used in Vietnam because it was lighter, it was more lethal, and it was more of a killing machine than the guns that our soldiers were using in Vietnam. So, it is designed to kill more effectively, more efficiently.

Anyone vaguely familiar with the history of the M-16 knows this is absolute bullsh**. The M-16 replaced the M-14 as the basic infantry rifle. The M-14 fired the very potent NATO 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge (let me stop here and “gunsplain” for the sake of lefties who are feeling as though their manhood is being minimized. The first number is the diameter of the round…uh, bullet. The second is the length of the cartridge…or bullet. This distinguishes it from other 7.62mm rounds like the 7.62mm x 39mm used by weapons developed in the former Warsaw Pact nations.) The replacement was made because the recoil of the M-14 made it impossible to keep rounds on a target if you fired rapid semi-automatic or, heaven forfend, on full-automatic. The 5.56mm x 45mm NATO ammunition has a lot less recoil. The weapon and ammunition both weigh a lot less than the weapon they replaced which increased the number of rounds a soldier can carry while reducing fatigue. The shorter length of the M-16 made it better in close in terrain and it also increased the market for foreign military sales as most of our allies who buy small arms tend to be somewhat smaller than your average American.

In summary, the M-16 has less range, less penetrating power and less kinetic energy than the weapon it replaced.

Cruz brought the conversation back to reality:

Joe, the firing mechanisms — the lethality of an AR-15 is indistinguishable from many deer rifles. When we were having this debate in 2013, Diane Feinstein proposed her so-called assault weapons ban. I put up a picture of one of the most common deer rifles in America, owned by millions of Americans. Under the statute she introduced, that was not a quote “assault rifle.” And then I held up a $5.99 little plastic handle. If you attached the plastic handle to it, suddenly it was a banned assault weapon.

This is the key point. The gun-grabbers are trying to ban weapons based on aesthetics. If the gun looks too scary, it has to be evil and banned. To make this great idea work, semi-automatic rifles have to be banned. Period. There is no middle ground.

SCARBOROUGH: So, your argument here is that deer rifles are just as lethal if somebody takes-

CRUZ: [interjecting] The firing mechanism is functionally the same.

SCARBOROUGH: -if somebody takes a deer rifle into a high school in Parkland, that that deer rifle is going to be as lethal as an AR-15?

CRUZ: So Joe, my argument is two-fold. Going after the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, it doesn’t work. It was actually the Bill Clinton Justice Department that concluded that the assault weapons ban had zero statistical impact.

(This is the report Cruz references.)

SCARBOROUGH: [cutting in] Okay, but — you know better than anybody — and I don’t want to — I mean — we don’t want to get into a sort of a moot court argument here, but you know better than anyone what the Second Amendment says and what it does-

CRUZ: I don’t know about better than anyone, but I know what the Second Amendment says.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, but you were involved with Heller, weren’t you?

CRUZ: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: You were involved with Heller.

CRUZ: I represented 31 states in Heller defending the Second Amendment.

SCARBOROUGH: Exactly. And so you know that at least where it stands right now, Scalia said that the Second Amendment means that people have a right to keep and bear arms in their homes, they have a right to have handguns in their home, they have a right to have shotguns in their home.

CRUZ: He didn’t just say their home by the way. The [word] “home” is not a qualifier.

Another big lie by Scarborough. Scalia didn’t limit possession of weapons to the home. Cruz called him on it and Scarborough acted like it didn’t happen.

At this point, Scarborough starts to realize he is outgunned, so to speak, and tries to move into the legal status of the Second Amendment. Cruz realizes he’s dealing with a moron and lets it show:

SCARBOROUGH: But, if you go from 2008 and the decision in 2010 all the way through now, obviously the Supreme Court has denied cer-, time and time again for limitations on assault-style weapons, for limitations on carry, for limitations on just about everything — but what you and others successfully argued in Heller. So, having an AR-

CRUZ: [interjecting] Well, remember: Heller was about a semi-automatic handgun, which the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment protected, and the District of Columbia could not ban.

SCARBOROUGH: But you know though that every American doesn’t have a Constitutional Second Amendment right to carry an AR-15. Yes or no?

CRUZ: I’m not gonna debate that. The courts, the courts will assess that it-

SCARBOROUGH: [interrupting] Wait, no, no, but the courts have assessed it. I just-

CRUZ: No they haven’t. That’s not what a denial of cert means. The court often on an area of Constitutional litigation will let the Federal Courts of Appeals — they call it percolating, which is to let them debate back and forth, and a denial of cert has no precedential impact.

SCARBOROUGH: [talking over Cruz] Senator, I know that. It’s been perco- — Senator, there are a lot of people, lawyers right now, that are rolling their eyes at what you’re saying because this percolation has been going on for ten years.

CRUZ: That’s not unusual.

SCARBOROUGH: And, and, and-

CRUZ: And remember, my career was litigating before the Supreme Court. So actually, this is not an uncommon thing. I recognize that’s not what you do, but the court denies cert-

And now we get to the “explosive” part:

It was only “explosive” because Scarborough misrepresented Heller, as he did in his recent Washington Post piece, and Cruz pointed it out. https://t.co/3CB6Vvssxb

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) March 8, 2018

https://twitter.com/rvwoods000/status/971780579741052928

SCARBOROUGH: You rec-, you rec-, you — wait. I don’t need you to lecture me on what the Supreme Court does and what it doesn’t do. When the — if the Supreme Court denies cert time and time again, and they have since 2010, and they’ve allowed Connecticut’s laws to stand in place that actually ban assault-style weapons. Right now, the court is sitting back and they are allowing that to remain in place and allowing that — that is constitutional right now. There is not a constitutional right, and you know it. And you can talk down to me all you want to, but you know there is not a constitutional-

CRUZ: Joe, who’s talking bad to whom? You say lawyers are rolling their eyes at me. I mean, let’s just be clear here.

SCARBOROUGH: Because you said: This is what you do, I understand it’s not what you do Joe. But I do understand this. Even a dumb country lawyer like me understands that an AR-15 today is not recognized as a constitutional right of Americans under the Second Amendment. Is that right or wrong?

CRUZ: Actually, under the test that the Supreme Court laid out in Heller, whether an instrument of defense is in “common and popular usage,” the AR-15 is one of the most popular and common weapons in the United States. Under the test of Heller, it is clearly protected.

Bottomline. Scarborough trotted out every leftist gun-grabbing trope you can imagine and Cruz smacked them down. Scarborough was revealed for the shallow non-entity that most of us have always thought he was and which his ratings reflect.

Here is the whole interview. Enjoy…that is if you are into watching gratuitous cruelty.