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“’I am the guy that has seen both sides of the issue,’ (new CNN host John) Walsh told reporters Monday. ‘I own guns. I’m the father of a murdered child. I’ve done nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered. We have a serious problem with guns in this country. And we refuse to address it. And the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous.’” So let’s see if we have this straight. Now that CNN’s viewership has fallen below that of even MSNBC, their strategy for clawing their way back toward tragedy TV ratings respectability is to resuscitate the long-defunct ‘America’s Most Wanted’ franchise under a new name…and let the show’s host pick up the fallen Piers Morgan’s anti-gun mantle . . .

Good luck with that, John. Before you embark on your anti-NRA jihad, though, here’s a tip: citing anything Joe Biden says has never really been a recipe for success.

From thewrap.com:

Walsh said the NRA is so deeply in the pocket of the gun industry that “they’re not a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, they’re a gun manufacturer rep.” He also said Vice President Joe Biden recently agreed with him that politicians are “scared s—less” of the NRA.

“I said to Joe Biden, ’90 percent of Americans are for a responsible background check for a gun, and you know what this Congress has done? Not voted on it, not brought it to the floor, not introduced a bill,’” Walsh said. “I said, ‘They’re all scared shitless of the NRA, aren’t they?’”

Thanks to his relentless railing against Americans’ natural, civil, and constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, Piers’s audience eventually dwindled to a number that could comfortably fit in your average Applebee’s. Which is why no one much sees or (mercifully) hears from the execrable expat Brit any longer. May John Walsh’s career follow the same meteoric trajectory.

[h/t Pascal]

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98 COMMENTS

  1. I had all the sympathy in the world for him. His son was murdered by decapitation though, not gunfire. He went from being a real crusader to just another money-grubber. Sad.

        • Dude, you’re making me feel really old. First, Ice-T’s grandchild, now this. Can’t we get these kinds of comments moderated, too? Instead of ad hominem, make it ad geezer.

      • “We have a serious problem with guns in this country.” OK, he tips his hand right here. He’s nothing more than another liberal control freak. And very lazy. He does like almost everyone else does, goes with the first feeling or thought that comes to mind and runs with it.

        “Problem with guns?” So the implement is the problem? Oh, OK, it can’t be what made the person violent that’s the problem, it’s the inanimate object.

        Unfortunately, he is as stupid as most of the American society, so he makes sense to most people.

    • What? So the son’s death had nothing to do with guns?

      That means he’s already lost his “Bloody Shirt” credibility, even before he started. Is it that hard to be relevant to the topic at hand?

      • Walsh’s son was left alone in the video game section of a Sears store by his mother while she shopped. Some other kids there got into a scuffle over an Atari game and store security kicked them all out.
        While outside he was kidnapped, strangled and then decapitated by a serial killer.

        None of that has anything to do with guns.

        • I have never heard from or seen Mrs. Walsh on TV. Sounds like she should be reminding people kids at a young age should be kept close.

    • I agree with you Mike. John Walsh did start out as a crusader for finding kidnapped children and chasing down criminals in his Most Wanted series. They actually were responsible for apprehending many bad guy criminals.
      However, as you said, his son was NOT killed by a child molester with a GUN, but a child molester with a KNIFE who beheaded his son.
      While he, as many gun grabbers, wish to deflect the reality that legitimate drive for gun ownership is NOT the Gun Industry supporting the NRA, but the the honest, law-abidding citizen, who wants nothing more that to be left alone by street criminals and a tyrannical government.
      This blaming the gun industry and the NRA on gun violence is a classic Saul Alinzky (Rules for Radicals) propaganda which no intelligent person considers worthy “conversation”.

      Gee, I wonder what he would have used a gun, had he the opportunity, to prevent his Adams’ kidnapping and subsequent murder. Probably not. It’s for the sake of the children.

  3. JW is just another sellout. He has turned the murder of his son into a personal lifestyle for himself. Pathetic.

    • Probably all of them, but they don’t care about truth. They care about control and obtaining it by any means necessary.

      If that means misrepresenting data or outright lying about it, so be it. The ends justifies the means. It’s all good for the collective.

    • So we call the morons on it. I simply say, “If 90% of the voters are in favor of an issue, then it would be a slam dunk in Congress. The NRA does not have a single vote. Voters do. The only explanation for the background check law dying is because lots of voters called their representatives and told them that they’d need to find new employment if they backed the bill. The pols listened and didn’t vote for it..”

      And let’s be realistic – You can’t get 90% of voters to agree on anything, so the suggestion that they want these background checks is just asinine,

      • Hell I bet you couldn’t even get a 90% agreement that the earth revolves around the Sun due to the fact that greater than 10% of people “don’t remember that from school”.

    • The truth doesn’t matter. What matters is how the statistics and media portrayal of gun violence makes people feel.

  5. I think this might be the very first time I’ve ever read someone using “meteoric trajectory” correctly with respect to a hoped-for career path: high visibility, lots of heat, loss of mass (viewership?), along the way, and culminating with either a crater or a simple fizzling out.

    Well done.

  6. “I said to Joe Biden, ’90 percent of Americans are for a responsible background check for a gun, and you know what this Congress has done? Not voted on it, not brought it to the floor, not introduced a bill,’”

    What? They did all of those things. The bill failed by a vote. Just because you lost doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Like no other group on earth, “have a discussion” means “whine until we get our way” for gun controllers. Oh, and two year-olds. Gun controllers behave like two year-olds.

    • “Just because you lost doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Like no other group on earth, “have a discussion” means “whine until we get our way” for gun controllers. Oh, and two year-olds. Gun controllers behave like two year-olds.”

      This is true and it is VERY dangerous.

      And it’s not just gun controllers, but statists in general.

      I’ve been on the sidelines of an issue here where a bill has been put up 3 years in a row in the State. It has failed each time, yet each time it comes back. With each resurrection, it gains some tractions.

      I saw a similar thing a decade or so ago in SC..where a new local tax was put floated no less then six times before it passed. It kept coming back, and each time, fewer folks had the strength to fight it.

      It’s a tactic that works for their side. They are if nothing else, very, very patient. It has taken them generations to entrench their ideology into mainstream American thought.

      We cannot ever rest on our laurels of thinking a “win” here or a “win” there means it’s a done deal. This is a funny paradox about looking at the side that tries to regulate every aspect of life via legislation…”it’s the law” applies to US obeying THEIR wishes, but when a law favors us (eg, Constitutional Carry where it exists), well, the law itself is a problem.

      • They only have to win once. We have to win every single time.

        Or in even shorter terms: “ratchet effect”

        • +1000

          And, the current momentum is such that, IMHO, many believe that we are moving towards freedom. I content that we are moving away from it but have become so accustomed to the speed at which we are doing so that they don’t realize our direction of travel.

        • @ John in Ohio

          I think we are indeed still going in the wrong direction as a whole, but the momentum at the moment is against the left. You just don’t turn a ship this big around on a dime, you have to slow it first. Now, the question is can we take control fast enough to keep the ship from ramming into the ice? Unfortunately, even if we were able to get both houses under control of Americans with an American in the White House, the bureaucracy is still full of progressives, and they are almost impossible to fire (and for many government agencies, staff = policy in effect). There would first need to be a law to allow firing federal administrators, which would take time and effort to get in place (the unions will fight it like corned weasels). That’s not to mention all the prog federal judges. The progs could still do damage for years to come, assuming they haven’t inflicted fatal damage already.

        • What does “corned weasel” taste like? Is it rolled in corn meal and deep fried, or is it more like corned beef–boiled until tender?

        • @Old Ben turning in grave: While I don’t disagree mostly with what you wrote, the right has been bad for Liberty also. Look at all that has been done in the name of terrorism and The War on Drugs. We may have momentum against the progressives but we are still going in the wrong direction overall; away from freedom. The enemies of our free republic are statists, left and right. A communist tyrant or a fascist tyrant, it’s all tyranny no matter how one slices it.

      • This is one of the reasons I lean absolute on the RKBA and other liberties. With the hijacking of our educational system, it’s only a matter of time if major success isn’t achieved and maintained in the restoration of our republic. I’m sometimes shocked, but mostly saddened, by how many see the statist model of our government as normal. It’s not normal and Liberty will suffer if we continue on this course.

    • You might have added; “like spoiled rotten two year olds”, or perhaps; “like two year old brats”.
      Anyway, bravo!

  7. John Walsh: sympathy for his loss. Tragic. But….now that your “15” minutes of fame are long dead and gone you can’t stand not being in the spotlight can you!! Apparently your suffering from the onset of advanced “headupass” syndrome. Instead of looking at the Real Problems with crime in this country, lack of convictions, non enforcement of current firearms laws, a government bent on destroying this country, you instead jump on the MSM Bandwagon for one last “look at me” tour!! Hope your new media career is as long as my penis!! Don’t set your coffee cup down, you’ve got a very short career ahead!

  8. Poor guy has survived horrible emotional trauma. Now he wants to replace Pearce Morgan? Hasn’t he suffered enough?

  9. John Walsh, very sorry that some sick serial killer bastard abducted then murdered your son from Sears in 1981.

    Blaming the big scary NRA boogeyman cause you need a paycheck after Americas Most Wanted stopped…..
    Not Cool.

  10. CNN’s very own Nancy Grace? Just what people need. More statist loving hyper-opinionated murder-porn.

    • Nancy Grace and porn uttered in the same paragraph. . . . not cool this early in the morning

    • My wife just moved to the US from China. We like to watch Forensic Files on HLN. Whenever a Nancy Grace commercial comes on, my wife (Who never heard of Nancy Grace before) is baffled by the smug self righteousness she emotes in a 20 second commercial.

  12. Walsh has made a ton of $ on the corpse of his son. It’s OK for him to get rich but align himself with NBC to screw gun owners? And I’m getting tired of the oldest & largest civil rights organization being demonized. I guess Walsh doesn’t see the hypocrisy of being a gun owner & an anti at the same time…

  13. Makes a life-long career out of having us stare at the filthy underbelly of society, crimesploitation

    Is surprised we’d want to defend ourselves from it.

    -D

    • No joke. If anyone should be for no infringement, then it should be this guy. All that time spent on AMW and he doesn’t see that criminals will not follow the laws? He’s either blind, stupid and/or just wants $$$$ from CNN to continue being in the spotlight.

      What a disappointment. I’d almost say he’s a blood dancer considering his son was murdered, but I don’t think it was by a person with a gun.

  14. Who is financially propping up CNN? They certainly don’t seem to be concerned with ratings.

  15. “We have a serious problem with GANGS in this country. And we refuse to address it.” FIFY, John.

    Because anytime there is a gang crackdown, the local politicians who represent the families of the precious gangster snowflakes get hit with a racist or Uncle Tom tag, and get would get voted out. Plus, a gang crackdown means work and money, and keeping kids out of gangs means spending money intelligently. So to stay in office, and keep their pockets filled with tax dollars, they blame everyone and everything else, which means gun owners in rural and suburban areas. Then we have to deal with BS gun laws, while the precious gangster snowflakes walk around with Uzis in their waistbands.

  16. Oh hey its the guy from most wanted… yeahhhh not gonna be tuning in I prefer my former cop show hosts to not make a scene of themselves like John Bunnell after wildest police chases petered out.

  17. John Walsh can enjoy me and millions of other Americans to continues to boycott CNN.

  19. I am sad that John Walsh is taking this job. He had some credibility when hosting America’s Most wanted, much more so than Piers Morgan on his best day. That credibility could be bad for gun owners if a lot of people tune in and hear the lies of the gun grabber industry with no idea that 87.349% of all the facts they will hear will be lies and distortions. (see what I did there? I can make up statistics just as easy as they can) I had actually thought that Mr. Walsh had decided to retire and spend time with family and friends. CNN must have offered him wheel barrows of money for this gig.

    • “87.349% of all the facts they will hear will be lies and distortions”

      You know better than that, the correct percentage is 87.34917. Please endeavor to be more precise.

  21. John L, you beat me to it on the meteoric path comment. I honestly can’t ever recall anytime where the phrase was used in a context that properly emulates what a meteor actually does.

  22. When it became painfully obvious just how much of a statist he was years ago, I could no longer stand to watch him or hear him speak. This latest is no surprise. Take a look at those who are most likely to be part of John Walsh’s fan base on the interwebs. WebSleuths is one example that comes to my mind; many housewives and mothers. A lot believe the garbage that he is shoveling. They vote… 🙁

  23. Hope he reconsiders this particular hornet’s nest. Had a lot of respect for the guy and all the good he’s done over the years, so it would be a shame to see him lose so much credibility so easily.

  24. ” . . .And the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous. . .’”

    So the best this “expert” can do is present a lame straw-man argument like this? This guy is laughably irrelevant. Oh, yeah, he’s on CNN so that explains it. He’s probably a big deal to the 3 or 4 thousand people who watch him.

    CNN is a leader in answering questions nobody asked.

  25. What makes a man who admits to doing “nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered” think he can objectively opine about “guns in this country”?

    And at the risk of sounding insensitive, wasn’t Mr. Walsh’s son murdered with a machete?

    • After reading your comment an odd question popped into my head. I wonder if Walsh managed to secure a way to carry under the Law Enforcement Safety Act. IIRC, he was made deputy sheriff and held some other tittles as a result of his America’s Most Wanted work. If he is able to carry most places or has armed bodyguards then that would fit the hypocritical theme of these higher profile gun grabbers.

    • Yeah, this is his problem exactly. If you only focus on the negative aspect of a thing, it’s all you can talk about. What about the millions of lives SAVED by guns who will be adversely affected by do-nothing gun control.

      It’s a shame. I wish he had something better to do with his time than lecture us about bad stuff other people did, but it’s all he’s equipped himself to do. Self-admittedly.

  26. Well, I’ll be a jerk and say my “sympathy” for Walsh’s loss 33 years ago is negligible (and that’s generous) because using his son’s (non gun involved) murder to fuel an agenda to advocate for further infringements of American’s natural, Constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear Arms is so wrong it negates any sympathy I could feel for the man.
    But, he’s on CNN, so the threat is minimal…you know if an MSNBC viewer switches over to a CNN show, MSNBC loses viewer share and vice versa, If all five watch one channel, no one is watching the other.
    Let CNN waste their money on another failed show, maybe it will bring them another step closer to going off the air.
    It does bother me that I keep hearing the allegation that The NRA is just a “mouthpiece” for the Firearms Manufacturers. I am not saying I disbelieve it, or believe it, but I have a nagging concern. Might be a good topic for a TTAG Article and discussion. I would bet more people who comment here tend to believe it to be the case than not. Some people say The NRA did little or no political lobbying prior to the passage of The Gun Control Act of 1968, then the necessity was forced upon them and they undertook it reluctantly.

  28. Walsh was clearly a police apologist when he narrated his shows. I’m not sure that I consider him to be much of a threat. The whole “I’m a gun owner, but support common sense gun safety reform” meme is a contradiction in terms. They should just stay this:

    1. I’m a gun owner, but I hate myself because criminals sometimes use guns in their crimes. I don’t have the same issue with knives, cars, or cell phones, though.

    2. I’m a gun owner, but the only guns that should be allowed are the kind of guns that I have.

    3. I’m a gun owner, but I really don’t mind paying more for guns and ammo.

    4. I’m a gun owner, but I only really need to keep my gun unloaded and locked in a safe because I couldn’t possibly be trusted to use it in self defense. The fact that thousands of other Americans can successfully use firearms to defend their lives, homes, and families is concerning to me, and makes me feel like an impotent coward. I don’t think that I can achieve their success, so I will try to make success for them more difficult.

    5. I’m a gun owner, but I don’t really understand the technical reasons why other gun owners oppose “smart guns”. If a smartphone is good, then a smart gun must also be good. I can’t understand why anyone would oppose adding an expensive and unnecessary component to a firearm that has not been proven to be reliable or effective.

    6. I’m a gun owner, but don’t shoot very much, and don’t understand how to use my firearm. Rather than spend the time to become competent, I would rather just consider myself to be an expert on all matters that are firearm-related. If a gun violence victim can be propped up as a gun expert, than clearly a gun owner can automatically share that status. I want to have an opinion that is valued, even if that opinion is not based on history, facts, experience, or technical competence.

    7. I’m a gun owner, but I don’t understand police budget and time constraints. If a politician says that police are highly trained shooters, I will accept that opinion without argument. I don’t understand that shooters like Jerry Miculek and Kirsten Joy Weiss have 100 times more experience and training with firearms than the average police officer. I have never seen or heard that most police officers leave shooting competitions because their pride is hurt when they are beaten so badly by “civilians.” If a police officer is wearing a uniform and a badge, they must also have special skills that enable them to be better shooters, stronger, and more clever.

    • He may have a gun, but he’s no gun owner. He cannot see “both sides of the issue” because the only issue is a contrived one, so he really sees his own side which is drumming up more business.

    • Well said.
      The ‘police apologist’ theme is quite common in media types hailing from the cop / prosecutor industrial complex. I suspect they
      a) don’t want to offend their friends / contacts from their past.
      b) know most media is slanted toward anti-2A / statist problem solving – so they go along with the narrative.

      I first noted this when reading criminal profiler (and ex-FBI) author John Douglas. Specifically annoying was Douglas’ refusal to make value judgements against criminal justice systems in predominantly Democratic areas where repeat thugs were often sentenced very lightly.

    • I have known people from all seven categories you describe, and your descriptions are right on.

  29. Ahhh…..the hardest working man in the celebrity victimhood business is going on tour again, eh? I suppose any day now we can expect Walsh, like Brown did of Jackson, to accuse the Sandy Hook blood dancers of stealing all of his best moves.

  30. – Walsh said the vice president replied, “John, every one of them. Because the NRA will run a tea bagger against you. … They’ll put 5 million bucks against you.”

    Y’know, I’m beginning to wonder if this actually only occurred in his mind.

  31. Owning a gun is not seeing a side of the issue any more than having a black friend makes you an expert on racism.

  32. I believe we should start a pool to see who gets canned first. John Walsh or Rosie O’Donnell on “The View” . Both have equal followings….. and similar positions on guns.

    • John will probably win, because Rosie will have to be smoked before she can be canned.

  33. “And the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous.”

    There is not one teacher or administrator that is within 20 years of 80 at my child’s school. Even if there was one or two why would that be a problem if they were mentally and physically able to carry? Lastly the suggestion to carry would bout have been compulsory for every teacher.

    This type of rhetoric only serves to discredit his reliability as competent commentator.

  34. What, his son was murdered, now he’s qualified? If he goes down this road, he will be vilified as bad as P.M. was. Best for Walsh to STFU while he’s ahead.

  35. Why is it that when John Walsh talks it sounds like he really needs a few big blasts of Afrin?

  36. Sorry for his loss, but really? Playing the “I see both sides, I own guns!” card, and then saying we need background checks? Assuming these “guns” of his were purchased legally and through an FFL, you’d think he’d know WE ALREADY HAVE THEM. Sick and tired of hearing this argument. If he starts talking about “30 caliber high capacity magazine clips,” I’m done with trying to educate people.

    • Rumor has it that he is returning to the UK to make their lives miserable in television there. And to that I say, “Good bye, so long, see ya, bon voyage……”

  38. Having just read the Wikipedia article on Adam Walsh (John Walsh’s murdered son) I now feel justified in typing the following:

    The Walshes were/are lousy parents who want to blame my guns for their child’s death. Never mind that their child wasn’t even murdered with a gun – He was murdered for having *excrement-deleted* parents who neither trained their child to avoid kidnapping nor properly supervised him (he was 6 years old, and you left him alone that long?)

    Is there any anti-gun activist out there with a shred of the personal accountability that you’d find in any average adult? (But then, I repeat myself.)

  39. I lost all respect for Mr. Walsh after hearing that nonsense.

    Just like all the other Statist control freaks, he literally dances in the blood of innocents (up to and including his own son who was rather decapitated and not shot… 33 years ago) to further an agenda that has only ever been conclusively proven sand reproach and beyond all doubt to have left themselves and their own children more vulnerable — NOT less — to the low-life scum that killed them.

    He’s a blood-dancing control freak that will share the same fate as Mr. Morgan: to languish in the annuls of mediocrity as a failed media circus clown.

  40. The NRA is not a gun manufacturer rep. Gun manufacturing is a tiny little industry. It is pocket change to the individual big companies in existence. There’s no way some little $12 – $15 billion industry is going to somehow fund the most powerful lobby in the United States. The NRA is a grassroots civil rights organization.

  41. Oh, boy, if you thought those quotes were a goldmine of stupid, check out his bit about GPS trackers in every gun.

  42. I’m a gun owner. And I say, John you are an ass clown. Probably always were and will be.

  43. Still seeking adulation and profit from his son’s death after more than 30 years. What a pathetic worm he has become.

  44. I actually understand him. If I went through what he went through, I probably wouldn’t be rational about crime control either. Maybe not even 30 years later.

    But the fact is he has become an enemy of Liberty and needs to be treated as such. How many other people will be burned by the flames of gun control he’s fanning? How many victims can be traced back to his advocacy of disarmament?

    John, you lost your son in a terrible way I can’t comprehend. But what you’re doing may end up costing other people their lives as well. It’s been said that those who chase monsters risk becoming one. You’ve helped put a lot of bad people in prison, and that demands respect. But you’ve now crossed over into the dark side. You know as well as anyone else that criminals get guns no matter what. By extension your policies are only going to infringe upon the good.

    Turn back around before it’s too late and you wind up no better than the monsters you hunt. Turn back while people are still willing to give you a chance to do so.

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