MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tore into Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for claiming on Thursday, during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that a ban on assault weapons is unconstitutional, calling the argument ignorant and asking if the Harvard-educated lawmaker is illiterate.

Cruz made the comments moments before the Senate committee advanced Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) proposed ban on military-style weapons to the full Senate and rudely lectured Feinstein on Second Amendment jurisprudence, likening restrictions on guns to censoring books under the First Amendment.

On Friday, the Morning Joe host explained that Cruz’s argument misinterpreted “what the Second Amendment says and what Scalia, Thomas, and the conservative court said in 2008 about what the Second Amendment is and what it is not”:

SCARBOROUGH: Did they teach Ted Cruz to read what the Supreme Court said? Especially in the landmark, the landmark decision regarding Second Amendment rights over 200 years was written in 2008? I’m just wondering why would he use his seat on the Judiciary Committee if he went to Harvard to — to — to put forward a willfully ignorant statement about this bill violating the Second Amendment, because it does not. And Ted Cruz knows it does not. So who is he playing for? Is he playing for — for — for people who can’t read, for illiterates? I don’t understand…. When you’re condescending and you don’t even have the facts right. When you’re misstating what the Second Amendment says as interpreted by the conservative court, by Scalia. I have a problem with that.

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Indeed, to quote Justice Scalia’s decision in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” The ruling also allows limitations on ownership of “dangerous and unusual” weapons that are not in “common use” — like, for example, assault weapons.

MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough admitted on Sunday that Republicans only kept their majority in the House of Representatives as a result of gerrymandering, noting that the GOP received less votes than Democrats in the 2012 election. Scarborough argued that Republicans must prevent radical ultra-conservative voices from dominating the party’s message and pointed out that the GOP is already losing electoral ground among voters who view it as too extreme and out of touch with middle class Americans:

SCARBOROUGH: William F. Buckley in the 1960s at some point had to start defining the boundaries of conservatism. He went after the John Birch Society, Ayn Rand, George Wallace. That has to happen again with this party because it’s getting smaller and smaller. In this debate, we actually have conservative thinkers, talking about ronald reagan being a RINO — a Republican in name only, because he supported an assault weapons ban. They keep pushing themselves closer and closer to the cliff. But I just have to say one other really important point, because I made a mistake over the past month talking about how Republicans have also won a majority in the House. As this article I was referencing mentioned, we actually got a minority of votes nationwide in House races. It was just gerrymandering from 2010 that gave us the majority.

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Indeed, a recent Republican State Leadership Committee report boasted that the only reason the GOP controls the House of Representatives is because state legislatures gerrymandered congressional districts in blue states. “Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn,” the report reads.

“Aggregated numbers show voters pulled the lever for Republicans only 49 percent of the time in congressional races, suggesting that 2012 could have been a repeat of 2008, when voters gave control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to Democrats. But, as we see today, that was not the case.”

A growing number of gun advocates are calling for sensible gun safety regulations in the aftermath of Friday’s tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association — spoke out in favor of regulating assault weapons during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, calling such laws “common sense.”

“I want to call all our friends in the NRA, sit down and have this discussion,” he explained. “Bring them into it. They have to be at the table. We all have to”:

MANCHIN: I just came with my family from deer hunting. I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip. Sometimes you don’t get more than one shot anyway. It’s common sense. It’s time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.

Manchin’s comments followed Joe Scarbarough’s declaration of support for gun safety. The former Florida Congressman received the NRA’s highest ratings over his four terms in Congress, but on Monday he opened Morning Joe with a monologue in which he admitted that the tragedy “changed everything.” Scarbrough called for a comprehensive approach that addresses what he called “the toxic brew of a violent popular culture, a growing mental health cris, and the proliferation of combat-styled weapons”:

SCARBOROUGH: I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand for my children. Friday changed everything. It must change everything. We all must begin anew and demand that Washington’s old way of doing business is no longer acceptable. Entertainment moguls don’t have an absolute right to glorify murder while spreading mayhem in young minds across america. And our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufacturers the absolute right to sell military-styled, high-caliber, semi-automatic combat assault rifles with high-capacity magazines to whoever the hell they want. It is time for Congress to put children before deadly dogmas. It’s time for politicians to start focusing more on protecting our school yards than putting together their next fund-raiser.

The NRA has remained silent in the wake of the tragedy, pulling down its Facebook page, while its Congressional allies refused to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows. But gun safety advocates aren’t about to let the urgent moment of action pass. During a prayer vigil in Newtown last President Obama promised to “use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.” “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard,” he asked. Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Meanwhile, lawmakers plan to introduce a renewed ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Advocates have also called on states to post their mental health records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and additional legislation requiring full background check on all gun transactions. Polls show that even NRA members back these reforms.