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Chris Hayes, host of msnbc’s new 8pm weeknight program, weighed in on assault weapons ban being dropped from the baseline gun control bill this week on Capitol Hill in an interview with Alex Witt Sunday.
“There continues to be a profound asymmetry in American politics on the issue of guns, in which on one side people who want to have an unfettered direct relationship with guns that is not regulated or mediated by the government. Those people care desperately and deeply about that issue. There are a lot of them, and they really care. And on the other side of the issue, people who want to see gun safety measures, there are a lot of them but it’s a very diffuse opinion.”
Hayes said it’s a classic example of preference versus intensity.
“The intensity tends to be all on the side that does not want assault weapons bans. The large majorities of public support are on the side that do want assault weapons ban but that’s very thin support. Meaning you go and poll someone and sure, you get large Americans – you get large majorities of Americans, but are people going to go ballistic, are they going to primary people? Mayor Bloomberg has essentially tried to cultivate a mechanism that would produce that much intensity on the other side, but that’s a much longer project, and I don’t think it’s there yet.”
Talking about his move from his weekend panel show “Up” to weeknights, Hayes said it would be hard to part with the weekends.
“It’s funny, I’m sure you have this conversation a lot with people. People are like, ‘Oh, it must be so bad…your schedule’ cause it’s a weird schedule, but I don’t know about you, I grew very acclimated to it. “
Hayes said the weekend schedule gave him lots of time to spend with his infant child.
“My biggest concern about the move, frankly, is there’s a lot of time in the beginning of the week that I have with my daughter. My wife and I talked about this, and I think the big thing is mornings are now are going to be kind of our time every morning. We’re sort of phasing that in where we get up, we have breakfast, we go for a walk. I’m not going to be there for bedtime. “
Hayes starts at 8pm on April 1.
Johanna Hoecker