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After the recent freakout on Fox, with Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Eric Bolling and their ilk all attacking Bob Costas for speaking out about gun violence, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart slammed them pretty hard this Monday evening for their pious proclamations that now is the wrong time to talk about gun violence -- "now" meaning "anytime whatsoever".

Unless of course you're Ted Nugent, or someone trying to make light of the need for gun control. Then it's perfectly alright.

Media Matters has more on that here: For Fox News, It's Never The Right Time To Discuss Gun Violence:

Fox News is helping to lead the right-wing media charge against NBC sportscaster Bob Costas after he brought up the issue of gun violence during halftime of Sunday night's NFL telecast. Fox's heavy-handed move reflects a long pattern of gun advocates trying to make sure a larger media discussion about gun violence in America does not take place.

Sadly, they appear to be succeeding. [...]

As I've noted for years, the mainstream media long ago stopped covering gun violence as a major issue. And even in the wake of horrendous massacres, like in July when a gunman armed himself with a Smith & Wesson M&P15 and shot 70 moviegoers in Aurora, CO., the press has routinely turned a blind eye to the American epidemic. High-profile shootings are mostly covered as a crime issue, not a larger social one.

And even when the topic is covered the press has done a woeful job including crucial context, like the fact that 30,000 people die and 70,000 more are wounded each year from gun violence in this country. Those figures represent eye-opening details that help tell the larger, disturbing story about gun violence in America. But they're ones that rarely get cited by the U.S. news media when covering gun deaths.

That may be why Fox was so quick to slap down Costas: The GOP channel doesn't want any semblance of a media debate about gun violence to take hold. And Fox certainly doesn't want it to take hold in the high-profile forum of a primetime NFL telecast.

Note that the now-is-not-the-time-to-discuss-guns line of attack pushed by Fox has become common practice among conservatives and Republican politicians. Following the Aurora massacres, Sean Hannity and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin were furious the "left wing" was trying to "politicize" the story when they simply made the obvious connection between run-away gun violence and the movie theater mass murder.

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The 2012 campaign season and a year of high-profile shootings have resulted in big profits for one of America's top firearms companies.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation announced on Thursday that sales had spiked 48 percent in its second fiscal quarter of 2013, setting a record of $136 million.

"The increase was led by continued strong sales across all of the company's firearm product lines, including M&P™ branded products, such as pistols, modern sporting rifles, and the recently launched Shield™ pistol designed for concealed carry and personal protection," the company said in a statement.

Smith & Wesson also predicted year-over-year growth of 30 percent for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year.

Stop Handgun Violence founder John Rosenthal told Current TV's Elliot Spitzer on Wednesday that gun companies were making record profits because lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association had been successful at making sure that the industry was largely unregulated.

"The dirty little secret is that the NRA loves high-profile mass shootings," Rosenthal explained. "The more gun violence, the better. The more fear, it causes people to buy guns, more profits for the gun industry. And then they funnel it into intimidating Democrats into submission. And then they fund the Republicans and the Republicans just roll over."

In 2012 alone, there have been mass shootings at a spa in Georgia, Oikos University in California, a cafe in Seattle, a theater in Colorado, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and a sign factory in Minnesota. Most recently, NFL football player Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, and then killed himself in Kansas City.

Texas gun store owner Jerry McCall told WOAI last month that firearm sales were a “madhouse” on Black Friday because President Barack Obama was re-elected and people were stocking up to prepare for the Mayan-predicted “doomsday.”

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Fox News host Dana Perino engaged in some victim blaming on Wednesday when she declared that women who had suffered from violence should "make better decisions."

The conservative hosts of Fox News' The Five on Wednesday continued their week-long effort to defend gun culture in the wake of a murder/suicide involving NFL football player Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, by claiming that "bedding" and vehicles were more deadly than guns.

"This isn't an issue about gun control," co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle insisted. "This is an issue about domestic violence and a man who had a troubled past; had a history documented of being, unfortunately, sadly, abusive to women; an inability to be able to control his temper and his emotions; a lack of impulse control."

"I'm glad you brought that up," Perino remarked. "On the same day that Jovan Belcher committed this crime, there was a man who beat his wife with a baseball bat and killed her. Okay? He wasn't a pro football player, he doesn't drive a Bentley, didn't make millions of dollars. But on the same day -- that's why I think talking about the gun culture so-called issue is actually a copout and not dealing with the real issue about mental health, anger management and domestic violence."

"Can you name me one person you know that saved their lives by a handgun?" liberal co-host Bob Beckel asked.

"Bob, I think that skirts the issue that women are victims of violence all the time," Perino replied.

"Should have guns," co-host Greg Gutfeld interrupted.

"Or maybe make better decisions," Perino added.

"Why don't we just strap a gun on everybody and walk around the street?" Beckel quipped.

"It'd be safer," co-host Eric Bolling asserted.

"Beautiful!" Gutfeld exclaimed.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Bob Costas, the longtime sportscaster for NBC, had some choice words for the gun culture in America at tonight's halftime of the Eagles-Cowboys game. Costas' remarks will infuriate conservatives and gun nuts. He cited this piece (In KC, it's no time for a game) by Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock, who expressed contempt for the NFL's decision to have Kansas City play on Sunday after the murder-suicide..

BOB COSTAS: Well, you knew it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf-life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games.

Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this?

Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

“Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."

“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?"

“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”