Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert opened on a solemn note. “Yesterday was another grim day for America when a gunman walked into a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket and killed 10 people, including a police officer,” host Stephen Colbert began. “This story is unspeakably tragic and I cannot imagine for a moment the grief of these families and this community can be approached with words alone.”
The only suitable way of honoring the victims is with “action,” like stricter gun reform. Instead, we have people like John Kennedy (R-LA), who, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, said, “We have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that, too.” Colbert’s response: “OK, I’ll take that deal!” He continued, “Let’s regulate guns the way we regulate alcohol and cars: You gotta be 21, you gotta pass a test to get a license, you gotta have registration and insurance for your gun, if you move to a new state you gotta do the whole damn thing all over again, and you can’t go out loaded.” Kennedy wasn’t done spouting “folksy BS.” He claimed America doesn’t have a gun control problem, it has an “idiot control problem.”
“Oh, we definitely have an idiot control problem,” Colbert said. “It’s people who don’t recognize that this country has long had a gun problem, John Kennedy. So when idiots like John Kennedy refuse to do anything about getting rid of idiots’ guns, it’s clearly time to get rid of idiots like John Kennedy. And that means voting them out.”
You can watch the entire monologue above.