Jon Stewart caught up last night following a lengthy hiatus and delivered a substantial riff on curbing gun violence in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Stewart, who has spoken out on the topic of gun control multiple times in the last year, battled a cold that left his voice raspy throughout the nearly 20-minute long segment.
He opened the show by assuming that, in the wake of Newtown, everyone was ready to have a discussion about gun control.
"Finally, everybody is ready to talk about gun violence. Nothing is off the table, no bad idea, it’s a safe space. Let’s start the discussion on gun control," he said, before cutting to a clip of Wayne LaPierre on "Meet the Press" saying that no discussion was needed and blaming the media and video games instead.
"Sorry, I just assumed that beginning a conversation about gun control meant starting with ... guns. But you want to talk about the non-gun causes of ... gun violence," Stewart said.
Stewart said that the time for discussion is now. He went off on various pro-gun advocates — LaPierre and the NRA, Fox News, Mike Huckabee and, finally, Alex Jones and his appearance on Piers Morgan's show.
By the end — touching on Jones' fear of government confiscation of weapons — Stewart addressed what he thought was the problem in getting anything done on gun violence.
"Now I see what's happening," Stewart said. "Their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present.
"We can't even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths that are actually, in reality, happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of Imaginary Hitler."
Watch the clips below:
Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
