Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera put an exclamation point on Tuesday’s gun debate with host Sean Hannity by brandishing what appeared to be a rifle or a musket. (See the video below.)
“Give me that gun,” Rivera told an off-camera man on “Hannity.” Rivera, who plays cohost on “The Five” on Fox News, grabbed an antique firearm and held it up.
“It’s like a weapon,” Rivera said, drawing laughs from Hannity and another Fox News colleague, Pete Hegseth. “This is what it looked like when the Second Amendment was enacted. This is what it looked like.”
“You’ll go to jail in New York for owning it,” Hannity said with a smile. “I’m just warning you now.”
“You want to have this? You can have this,” Rivera said. “You can run it, you can do whatever you want.”
“This is so funny,” Hannity said.
Rivera, a gun owner, points out that the Second Amendment did not cover modern firearms capable of mass destruction when the amendment was ratified in 1791. And AR-15-style rifles are beyond self-defense.
But the showdown with Hannity and Hegseth, who boast that he owns several AR-15s, is mostly non-existent. The two tried to embarrass Rivera for not knowing that “AR” stands for ArmaLite rifle and Hannity said that Rivera never fired a shot.
It appears to be an attempt to undercut Rivera’s argument that defending oneself or one’s home does not require the firepower of an AR-15.
Previously, Hannity used the shooting in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, where nearly 20 people died at the hands of gunmen who used semi-automatic weapons, to dubiously argue that California’s strict gun laws do not make citizens safer.
The state has one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation, according to 2020 figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a mass homicide rate below the national average, according to the California Public Policy Institute. reported last year.