The View Airs Clip of Reagan Arguing to Ban AK-47s: ‘They Revere Him, Why Don’t They Follow Him?’

ABC’s The View led Friday’s show with news about the manhunt for the mass shooting suspect in Maine, but quickly turned to statements that have been made by elected officials. And then co-host Joy Behar turned to the greatest inspiration of some of those elected officials, who publicly disagreed with them — former President Ronald Reagan.

After showing a clip of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) stating that mass shootings are a problem of “the human heart” and “not guns,” the audience booed before Behar went back to “Saint Ronald Reagan,” the former Republican president who remains one of the greatest idols for many modern-day Republicans. In a vintage C-Span clip from 1989, Reagan states the following:

I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen to own guns for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47 or a machine gun is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.

To which Behar replied: “They [Republicans] revere him. Why don’t they follow him?”

And before anyone suggests that this Reagan clip was AI-generated, or maybe he changed his tune after his presidency ended, Reagan was actually a co-signer of a letter to Congress along with former Presidents Gerald Ford (R) and Jimmy Carter (D) in 1994 in support of an assault weapons ban.

Watch the video above via ABC.

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