It seems as though MSNBC’s Ed Schultz has taken Rahm Emanuel’s belief that, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” to heart. Speaking on Monday prior to President Obama’s final press conference of his first term, Schultz disgustingly suggested that the tragedy at Sandy Hook could be "the 9/11 of gun violence."

Schultz, along with the rest of MSNBC have been on a gun control tirade since Sandy Hook, and used President Obama’s press conference to disgustingly use a tragedy for political purposes:

Well, this is all in the arena of the Second Amendment being one heavy political tool on all of these lawmakers. I'm tired of hearing lawmakers telling me what can pass and what won't pass. Let's listen to the American people for a moment and stop rendering judgment on what's going to have the votes and what's not going to have the votes. The fact is the American people are positioned. We're going to find out within the next few weeks whether Sandy Hook was the 9/11 of gun violence in this country. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]

To be fair, Schultz most likely used the 9/11 comparison to mean Newtown is a seminal cultural moment that can unite Americans around a common enemy. But then again, the common enemy seems to be law-abiding gun owners, as the vast majority of owners of so-called assault weapons use them peacefully for self-defense and target shooting.

Leaving aside for a moment the offensiveness of the comparison -- particularly to 9/11 victims and their families -- Schultz seems to forget that while 9/11 did unite the country together, the resulting anti-terrorism measures have faced fierce partisan backlash from the Left.

The PATRIOT Act, unmanned drone strikes on civilians, Guantanamo Bay, and of course the all-too-personal TSA pat-downs all remain unpopular with liberals, many of whom don't doubt that these policies have made it harder, almost impossible for another 9/11-style attack to occur on U.S. soil. Even so, liberals remind us, that is not an acceptable cost to pay for diminished freedom.

By using the 9/11 comparison, Schultz unwittingly opened up himself to that rebuttal: even if stringent gun control were to prove somewhat successful in preventing future mass shootings, it comes at a cost to constitutional liberty.

See relevant transcript below.