Prop and Robert Evans dissect the NRA's transformation from a marksmanship club into a political juggernaut, tracing Harlan Carter's 1977 coup and Wayne LaPierre's rise to the organization's radicalization under Charlton Heston. They analyze how the group blocked the 1994 assault weapons ban, stripped CDC funding, and leveraged rulings like DC v. Heller to cement individual rights, effectively defining terms like "red flag laws" to control discourse. Ultimately, this strategy created single-issue voters who view compromise as an existential threat, illustrating how fear-mongering has entrenched white supremacy in American politics while paralyzing Democratic responses to gun violence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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All right, y'all.
Welcome to Hood Politics with Prop.
This is a fun episode.
I got everyone's favorite connect here, Robert Evans.
I swear to you, you would be the greatest plug.
Like if you lived in the inner city.
I have been occasionally.
Yeah.
You'd be the greatest plug because number one, you're fearless.
And number two, it's like you seem to be able to get your hands on anything.
I mean, you know, I used to be a lot more fearful of that sort of shit.
Like it was a nice, maybe this is just being a white guy, but leaving the deep south for California and the West Coast, it was like, oh, suddenly I'm way less scared about driving drugs around in my car.
It's pretty true.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm going to open up the, well, before I before I go to this story, I want to ask you a question just off the head that I feel like I feel like it would be a fun exercise.
Right now, off the head, can you think of as many like nickname terms for guns right now?
Just off the head.
How many nicknames can you think of?
Just rabbling them off.
Heater, a strap, a piece.
I mean, nicknames, not like just like a sidearm, a bang stick, boomstick.
Yeah.
Blicky, burner, chopper.
You know what I'm saying?
Chopper.
Ooh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Burner and heater.
I feel.
Yeah, that's those, those are cousins.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Burner and heater.
I just think there is, I don't know if there's anything besides like sex and guns that has more nicknames.
Yeah.
I've always been partial to strap.
I don't know why, but that's the one that I find most satisfying.
I think strap helps.
I think strap, like in a lot of ways, I also feel like the slang you use for your gun has a lot to do with like the year you graduated high school.
Yes.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the, you know what I'm saying?
So like, yeah, strap is like, yeah, you listen to 90s rap.
You know what I'm saying?
That's why exactly.
That's why you say strap.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
You know, don't make me have to grab my strap and go rat tat tat tat.
If it's chopper, it's like, well, you, you've listened to southern rap.
You know what I'm saying?
Like you were into trap music.
So, you know, anyway, and then there's blicky, which is what I'm naming out of.
I haven't heard that one.
Blicky is what the young boys use, you know, really?
Yeah, she's blicky.
You know, a lot of times.
What is what is the etymology?
Because all the others, heater, obviously it's hot, right?
A strap that you like strap a gun on.
You know, the piece is obvious.
Like, what is what is a blicky?
I have no idea, Robert.
Okay.
I'll be honest with you.
So you have no idea where it came from.
I just heard the little homie say it.
You know what I'm saying?
Because I never know with the kids' slang.
I never know if they're just fucking with us, right?
Like if they are, but if possible, we tricked the old people into thinking blicky was a thing.
All right.
All right.
Producer here.
Producer here.
Blicky means a pistol.
To blick someone down is to gun them down.
The term blicky has been used by every top 40 rap artist you've ever listened to in the last five years.
Oh, okay.
That makes sense.
I know.
Now they say to blick, that makes sense.
So they turned a verb into an adverb or a verb into a noun.
Yeah, I totally get it.
It's like calling it a gat because it's like, I forgot about gat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
So many slang.
There's a lot of slang for guns.
Yeah.
Because of the obvious love affair that all of America has for guns.
Boy, we sure do love guns.
God, we love these things.
We love guns more than maybe any other country has ever loved like a thing that isn't bread or some sort of dipping oil.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
There's just anything that's not food or condiment or...
Yeah.
Because the way Americans love guns is like, is like the way French people love their bread or like in Thailand, they love that like chili oil that they put in stuff or like, like it's, it's like, it's a kind, it's a comprehensive love that is normally reserved for foodstuffs.
Yes.
That is that a food stuff that is like such a like a stand-in for your national and cultural identity.
You know what I'm saying?
Like like kimchi is a stand-in for what it means to be from this part of the world.
It's feel like it's the same way like hummus, right?
Like there's this massive conflict over hummus in Palestine with Israelis.
Anyway, I'm not going to get into that, but like it's, there's a, there's so much identity wrapped up in food.
And in America, it's like guns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not like this is our, this is our Nigerian jalof rice is our guns.
This is a Glock 19.
Yes.
This is a Glock 19.
We just love them things.
Which is just a matter of observation, not of evaluation.
Anyway, so since this is hood politics, it must start with some sort of connection to inner city hood living.
I'm going to tell y'all a story and then get into what we actually want to talk about.
And I would imagine, Robert, in some way, shape, or form, you may have a similar sort of memory.
Maybe not the same, but similar.
So I grew up, you've people heard this many times.
You've heard this many times.
I grew up in east side of South Central and then over to an area called the San Gabriel Valley, predominantly Latino area.
But what comes with being, in a lot of ways, is a person of color is we still went to church every sunday right, and in going to church, you know, our churches were very different than sort of white western Evangelical that was worried about like purity culture and, you know, nationalism and stuff like that.
They was just like, don't join a gang and don't get nobody pregnant.
That was the extent of our youth ministry.
That being said, we went off to youth camp, right.
So we did summer camp like every other little white Wonderbread, you know church.
We did youth camp like everybody else.
The only difference is youth camp costs too much.
But every year I know this now as an adult every year that like summer camp place used to do a week that was a third of the price right, so that now all the inner city churches can go, which I didn't know that.
I thought I was, I thought I thought it cost the same as everybody else.
I used to wonder why we would go to youth camp and it just be hood like it would just be like a bunch of just rival gangs, rival neighborhoods, because we, just we were the inner city churches.
I had no idea.
That's how it worked.
That's just how it worked.
So anyway, we're at youth camp.
Uh, you know dudes, is like stacking on each other, like you.
Stacking is like showing gang signs whatever, right.
But either way, you know, everyone's having different experiences.
Some people have a good time, some people aren't, some people not involved in none of this stuff.
Whatever the case may be, this is the way sort of uh youth camp went.
So there was one year that there was these boys that I met that you know went to another church, like Crosstown Whatever who decided most of them decided that they just ain't like me right, for whatever reason.
I just happen to be their target right, which I know.
You understand that somebody just decides they don't like you.
I don't know why they just don't.
So once they decided that uh any, anything I ever did was funny a joke, whatever the case may be, right now I now at my church I mean, we got some g's you know what i'm saying like we got some brothers that are like not even paying that, no attention, because they know if it go down like oh, we will mop the floor with these dudes.
So like, don't even you don't even need to acknowledge the fact that they cracking jokes about you because, if it come down to it, I beat the out of these boys, right.
So that's kind of like the attitude of my little, like sort of seventh, eighth grade group of guys.
Anyway, last night, of those guys and wait, before I say that, of those guys there was like one or two of them that, like I actually made friends with right, that we were cracking jokes.
They loved hip hop, like I did whatever, whatever.
Whatever the case may be, I kind of made friends with two of them at one point at the end of the last night.
I was headed to the bathroom and it's camp right, so it's like a big old shared bathroom situation, right.
So I was headed to the bathroom and I could see the group of dudes behind me, kind of walking a little further behind me right now, as I was headed to the bathroom, the two that were my friends caught up to me right, and we're just talking whatever, whatever.
Hey, where do you?
You know?
Hey, so you know when's y'all bust leaving whatever, whatever.
So we're just talking about That.
And then he whispers, don't go in the bathroom.
And then just kept talking, you know.
And I was like, What?
And he was just like, He's just like, real quick, not like, Don't go in there, don't go in there.
So I was like, He goes, But if you, or he's just whispering, if you go in, just go right back out, right?
So, so I was like, Oh, they finna jump me.
They're gonna jump me in the bathroom, right?
So, at first, I was like, I scared of these fools, you know what I'm saying?
That's my first thought, right?
Right, yeah, but then, but then I looked behind me and I was like, It's actually a lot of y'all, you know.
And I wasn't with none of none of my boys, like, I was just walking by myself.
So, I was like, by the time any of my friends get here, I probably had a couple concussions.
So, the way fights work, if your fighting experience comes from movies, is that if you're one person and there's multiple people, you're going to lose the fight, right?
Like, it doesn't really even matter, like training, whatever.
Every now and then, you get somebody who's like a freak at that, but you're generally you're just going to get your ass beat.
Yes, they're not going to attack you one-on-one.
They're not, it's not in a single file that they attack like movies.
No, you're going to get piled on.
You're just going to get wailed.
Yes.
And I'm like, It's urinals, it's toy.
Like, I'm like, Oh, no, no, no.
A lot of nasty stuff can happen at all.
Yeah, I'm not going in there.
So, that's what I did.
I just went in and went out, right?
And I didn't look back until I was far enough away and I saw all them dudes looking out the other door and then looking back at their homies, that the guys that gave me the clue, right?
And I can't hear what they're saying, but I could see them kind of being like, basically, like, what the fuck, man?
Like, you know what I'm saying?
And them being like, oh, I don't know, you know, right?
Whatever, just them playing it cool.
Like, I don't know, like, whatever, you know, all that to say, even though their group of people decided that this is the way we felt about this dude, there's no way of telling that if everybody actually felt that way.
Because it's possible that more than just those two dudes was like, why are we, why do we even care about this food?
Like, what, what difference does it make what he's doing or not doing?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
But the rules are you just can't speak up because even if you do, even if you're like, I'm down for the hood, I'm down for the set, but like, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't know why we, why are we so worried about that?
Actually, I think I kind of think some of this is stupid.
You know what I'm saying?
But you're not going to say nothing.
You're not allowed to say nothing.
But, but what, what happens is oftentimes you're not the only one that feels that way.
Matter of fact, most of y'all feel that way.
And then what the homie, JoJo, what the homie Jojo said is sometimes some of the stuff like that the set got to do is because just because your OG like got his feelings hurt from some girl and now y'all got a beef with this block, but it's really just because your OG just got his feelings hurt from some girl.
And like, but nobody's saying nothing.
You know what I'm saying?
Because you got to follow whatever that person was saying to do because they in charge.
Yeah.
I mean, no, that like everything works that way.
Like to a degree, like that's like why a lot of like you can you could get on Twitter and see like what the what the rage machine is like going after every day.
And half the time it's like, it's shit like that.
It's like somebody, somebody had a beef with somebody else.
And so now everybody's angry at like a whole group of people, right?
Like it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's history too.
It's like, it's the fucking, it's World War I, right?
Yeah.
Nobody wanted to go in, but like somebody fucked with like somebody else's friend.
And so now we all got to get in.
Yeah.
And now we all like, it snowballs.
Like one dude gets fucking clapped.
And like, because of that, it winds up being 20 million people get fucking clapped.
Like, that's the way the people work, right?
That's the way the people work.
The psychology isn't any different when it's like a neighborhood as opposed to, you know, the Hollen Zollern Empire.
Right?
Exactly.
And also the way that the NRA has a death grip on the right wing.
There we go.
That's where we're at.
Yeah.
I want to talk about.
Yeah.
I want to talk about this research that from Michael, Dr. Michael Siegel, Siegel from Tufts University did, where he surveyed the way that he's like right-wing Republican NRA, you know, gun supporting people actually feel about restrictions on the Second Amendment.
Yeah.
And that, and why ain't nobody saying nothing?
The key means a lot of team.
What is something?
Well, yeah, that's a broad topic, right?
Because an awful lot of, I mean, this is something that gets brought up, perhaps not enough, but like a ton of different restrictions.
Like when you talk about stuff like assault weapons bans and whatnot, like bans on specific weapons or even things like mag caps, it gets a lot more controversial.
But there's a bunch of stuff that like gun owners are broadly supportive of.
And there's like which like universal background checks.
And then there's stuff that gun owners are supportive of depending on how you bring it up to them, right?
Red flag laws have been heavily politicized.
And so if you say like, do you support red flag laws?
In a lot of gun owners' heads, they'll think about whatever it is Fox News warned them the red flag laws were.
But if you say like, hey, if some dude like beats the shit out of his wife and kids, should he be able to buy a gun?
Gun Owner Controversies00:05:25
They'll be like, of course not.
Right.
So that's a red flag law.
Yeah.
And I'm one of the most important things that the NRA has done over the last, I mean, it's been like 40 years, but it's really escalated since since about 2000.
One of the most important things they've done is flatten any kind of discussion about gun control to confiscation of all guns versus nothing, right?
Yes.
And if you can, this is not the NRA pioneered this, and we talk about this in an episode of a three-parter on behind the bastards coming up.
They're not the only thing that this has done.
Basically, the idea is that the right wing recognized early on and really started moving towards this in the 1970s that the best thing to do was to build single issue voters whose single issue was something they would not compromise on and that the Republican Party would make central to their activism.
Abortion is one of these, right?
Yes.
Guns is another.
And the beauty of a single issue voter is you don't have to improve their lives.
You don't have to like fix anything.
You don't have to be good in any aspect of governing.
All you have to do is stand with them on that single issue.
You either fly this flag or you don't.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, you know, that is disastrous, has been disastrous for the concept of democracy.
It's been disastrous for like the potential future of the human species, but it's very smart politics.
Like this is objectively good politics.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You've already gotten to the punchline of the show, which is great.
So let's reverse engineer the point that Robert just made, which is the point of this episode, which is you create a person into a single issue voter.
Either you down with us or you not down with us, right?
And it works, you know?
So like you said, there are four laws that according to this research that would probably drop gun deaths by 35%.
And they say that like 70% of gun owners would actually support this if it's presented to them correctly.
Like you said, the permit requirements, red flag laws, universal background checks.
But yeah, the idea of like, if a person has a history of violence, probably shouldn't.
Yeah, man, if you're fucking hitting your kid, like, right, that's not a, you have a, you have a right.
A lot of people who are pro-gun control don't like to talk about it this way, but you do.
You have a human right to own a firearm.
So if you're talking about restricting people's human rights, which you are with gun control, you have to be careful about how you do it because among other things, that can, the consequences of that can extend beyond guns because that's the way that like jurisprudence works.
But it's pretty well established that if you do violence to people, you can lose certain rights.
And broadly speaking, we all seem to be fine with that.
Yeah.
This is just, yeah, it's like, this is what for some reason, I don't know why the Democrats don't know how to talk, but when they say things like common sense laws, like the fact that when it comes out of their mouth, it sounds condescending, but it's what it is.
It's like, no, for real, like we do this all the time.
If you violate certain social codes, you kind of don't get those rights that are expected of those who participate in society.
And if I could have notes for them, like one of the things would be when you're trying to talk about this, don't use terms.
If you call it a red flag lock, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Then the right-wing media can take that and define a red flag law the way they do, which is like, oh, they're going to define being conservative as like, you know, a red flag and whatnot.
And then they're going to take your gun.
If you instead say, we should take guns away from people who hit their spouses and kids, right?
It's hard to fucking argue with.
Easy to fucking argue with.
Yeah.
And it gets to the core of what you're trying to do, right?
Yes.
Yes.
But what, but what radicalization does is what you explain is you boil it down to a sense of what we're getting to.
You boil it down to a sense of identity.
This, that this thing is a stand-in for who we are, right?
So to abridge that is to abridge me as a person.
Exactly.
You know, and that's a lot of times even in like inner city outreach when we tell you, you know, I'm saying you're trying to get this kid to drop his flag.
And it's like, you're asking me to drop who I am.
Right.
You know, and then, but there's a lot of work into understanding.
I understand where your brain goes with that.
I understand the history of your relationship to this thing.
However, it does not have to be this way.
Right.
There's two golden rules that any man should
Thanks Dad Promo00:03:24
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Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
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We always say, trust your girlfriends.
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Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
They said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
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Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
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Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
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Surely stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
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I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
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My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So yeah, you know about your boy, Harlan Carter?
Yes.
Again, we're doing like a three-parter on Bastards about him.
Yeah, okay, Harlan, about him specifically.
Yeah, he is.
NRA Structure Explained00:15:35
Okay.
He is one of the most important people to know about to understand how we got here.
He really, he's like, I think he's one of those names that like, yeah, bro.
Like, you make a movie about him where it's like his effect on the life we live now.
The fact that there isn't more content on him is either A, proves his brilliance or B, is like, oh, y'all, we missed a biggie, you know, because of who he is.
Now, I could do, I got notes on him, but you about to do that.
Sounds like, seems like this is a promo for one of the ones you got coming up now, since apparently you doing that.
And you could run, I could do a quick overview.
You could do a quick overview.
It's up to you.
Yeah, I've just done it.
Okay.
So yeah, let's have you hit it.
And because I'm interested in talking about him in the context of like he, what he did to the NRA to take it over, and it's not obviously his, his part, part of what I think is important about the story of Harlan Carter is that like he hits both the militarization of the police and the birth of American gun culture as it exists, which is crucially important.
But like the way he, the way he whipped things together in the NRA is it was some fucking hood politics.
It really was.
Yes.
Yeah.
So pre-1977, NRA was not the NRA that we know of.
You know, started off at the end of, was it Civil War, right?
End of the Civil War.
End of the Civil War.
It was like, all right, you got these like hotheads that kind of don't really know how to shoot.
You know what I'm saying?
And like, okay, listen, man, teach you how to shoot.
You know what I'm saying?
Take care of your weapon.
Boy, I wish our northern inner city kids were better at shooting Confederates.
Yes.
Yes.
That was it.
Which is a noble goal.
Yes.
You know what I'm saying?
Where it's just like, look, man, this is how you hold a gun.
You feel me?
You know, this is how you aim.
This is what you do.
This is how you take care of your gun.
Just normal gun safety, you know.
Yeah.
And basic marksmanship.
Basic marksmanship.
You know what I'm saying?
And obviously, like the idea of like, none of them were like what we would call Second Amendment absolutists.
No, because the Second Amendment, no one talked about it.
No one talked about it.
It was a, it was, there had not, there was not up until fairly recently, like within the 20th century.
The Supreme Court like basically didn't touch the second.
It was, it was not like a big, part of this is that everyone, like guns were not restricted very much in many places in the West, right?
Because they just weren't an individual firearm was not yet particularly threatening, right?
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and then into the Black Panthers.
Right.
Right.
There's a.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
No, no, no, please give your bet.
And then I'll say the thing I was going to say.
Yeah.
Into the Black Panthers, which was like, just like what happens with everything America does.
Once black people realize is like, oh, wait, we could do that too.
Then everybody goes, wait, hold on now.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on now.
Right.
So an interesting example of this, seeing how we're in our midterm and, you know, out here in Cali, we just sent off our primary ballots.
Funny thing about the end of mass slavery and the beginning of Reconstruction, the weird middle between that and the black codes was once we got the right, we had rights to vote.
You know what I'm saying?
Once we was finally set free.
And what did we do?
Well, we voted.
Right.
And that caused some problems.
And that was some problems.
Because we started putting, it was like all black governments because there was more of us.
And we was like, well, you telling me I get a say as to who in charge?
Well, I want my uncle in charge because he ain't going to whip me.
That man never owned me.
Right.
So it worked.
Right.
And once it worked, fools was like, hold on now.
Wait, this working too good.
So they said, okay, now we can't have everybody vote.
You can vote if your grandmama could vote.
Right.
Which was like, okay, y'all follow what we're doing here.
It's like, okay, I get it.
That's like very sneaky, but yes.
Yes.
It's like, oh, okay.
I see what you did there.
You know what I'm saying?
So take that theory about like, oh, crap, it actually works was the same.
What the Panthers realized is like, wait a minute, we got a right to bear arms.
Yeah.
And y'all don't thanks to the first Civil Rights Act, there was that's what, like, because initially after emancipation, there was like a whole a year or two where it was like, well, they still don't, there's nothing that guarantees these people rights, even though they've been emancipated.
And then Congress was like, okay, fuck you.
Like, yes.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And yeah.
So after that point, yeah.
And this was like not, it didn't start with the Panthers because there's like, um, what was it?
That was in 1919 when there was like that series of like mass lynchings and stuff.
Like the Rosewood stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of like black communities being like, we have a right to bear arms and all these people want us dead.
We should probably get we should get some guns.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
So like, like, don't think we pacifists.
You feel me?
Like, yeah, I'm a pass a fist across your face.
Yeah, exactly.
There's no pass.
There's no if you've had like members of your family murdered in the woods by mobs, you're, you, you can't really be a pacifist.
No, you're going to carry guns.
You know what I'm saying?
So you're going to do something.
Something, right?
So, yeah.
So, you know, we had open carry laws.
We was like, all right, well, you said we could have them.
So we finna have them.
And they said, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.
We don't want y'all to have them.
Yeah.
That's whoa.
What made you think you guys had this right?
Yeah.
We didn't think this through.
So, so I, you know, the NRA changed they tune once the uh once the Panthers started actually listening to what y'all had to say.
And there was a, there's an article that just came out today as we record this in Salon that was like, um, let me, I have it pulled up here because it's it was a pretty incredible, pretty incredible title and an example of like, hey, guys, maybe rethink the way you're framing some things.
Yeah.
Um, where is this?
Okay, yeah.
So there's this article in Salon when Ronald Reagan's racism saved lives, armed black men meant immediate gun control.
Now, they deleted that tweet and I think renamed or maybe even cut the article.
I have it checked, but like, oh my gosh, you could just not say that.
Yeah.
There's a lot you can say about gun control that isn't that.
Yeah.
We don't need to make that point.
Hey, man.
Yeah.
Maybe not.
Yeah.
Maybe not say everything that we said to you, Nogin, you know.
It's this thing that keeps like you catch this.
And again, not to say that obviously it's not racist to like look at children getting massacred in a school and being like, the fuck, we have to be able to do something.
Like I'm not making that claim in any way, but you do, there is this strain of like liberals who will repeatedly bring up like, well, you know, if we just gave every black man an AR-15, there'd be gun control.
And it's like, guys, that's not really the thing to hit, you know?
Like, still pretty racist, dog.
Like, guys, I don't know if you know that.
Still, you don't need to make that point.
Yes.
Yeah, man.
So, yeah.
So, in come the Panthers, they change their story.
There's this coup, like a literal coup in 1977 with this guy, Harlan Carter, who essentially radicalized, he took over the leadership, which I wish I would have known what that looked like, like practically.
Like, how did that actually look?
Oh, I can tell you that.
Oh, you can.
You don't go into much detail about this in the show.
But yeah, so it's the way the NRA worked is like, and it's not like specifically the NRA.
The NRA is like a type of organization that there's like a legal framework for in the United States.
And it's one example of that.
Like people will bring up a lot that they didn't cancel their membership meeting in, I think it was Colorado after the after Columbine.
And a thing that like the NRA defenders will note in kind of like its defense is that, well, it's legally required for us to hold a voting meeting and to give people X number of days of like warning about like where it's going to be.
So we couldn't change the meeting, but like we canceled a bunch of anyway, whatever.
There's like a type of structure for an organization that the NRA is.
And one of the things that means is that you have this like managing council, basically a board of directors, right?
And you have some like elected officials who run the NRA.
And as a general rule, they're in charge of like what the NRA does and says, right?
But you also have a group of lifetime members, and the lifetime members get a vote, right?
And it's kind of like if you can get enough lifetime members to like agree to motions in the room during this yearly meeting, they can pass motions and whatnot without the board of directors type organization or the elected officials wanting that or saying that, right?
It's kind of like, you know, you could, like, it's almost like they have kind of a republic democracy sort of set up, but there's also this, you could, the, the people, you know, the people who are lifetime members can do a, um, um, can do like a, uh, what's the fucking term when you like just poll the electorate on something and make the make a law based on that.
Um, I don't know.
It's like a plebiscite, right?
Okay.
So if you can, if you can whip, and this had not really ever been done before, right?
Like it was, it was like, it was kind of like a procedural thing where like, oh, yeah, technically they could like all vote and just add things to like the NRA charter directly and like dismiss the board.
It's possible, but like it never mattered, right?
Like what mattered was who was on the board and who was like the elected leaders at that point and whatnot.
And so it was very much like a, there was this kind of like gentrified aristocracy that was running the NRA.
And Harlan Carter and this other fucking dude who was a popular editor for a bunch of different gun magazines got together and whipped a bunch of votes, right?
Like they would, they spent like the entire year beforehand going around to people, going around to different lifetime members, prominent folks within the NRA community, people who were like kind of celebrities within that world and getting them to get their friends on board.
And then they like rented a bunch of hotel rooms during the event and spent days like getting all of their people in line for the big voting meeting.
Wow.
And then when it happened, basically they just put enough people who agreed with them in this massive room where they were doing what was supposed to be kind of a pro forma vote thing to like decide on, you know, a couple of minor, not even minor.
There was like a, they wanted to, the NRA old guard wanted to put together like a sporting center in Colorado, which these guys didn't like because they saw it as like a move towards the NRA as just a sporting organization as opposed to a second amendment act policy organization.
So they got all these people together in the room and like mobbed them.
And fucking, it was, you know, they basically swarmed them and had so many people there that they were able to vote out the old guard and to like vote in a bunch of things, including a statement that the NRA was a second amendment advocacy organization.
And like took it over.
Harlan Carter was running the NRA by the end of the meeting.
He walked into the meeting, having resigned from the NRA like a year ago, and he left the meeting in charge.
Crazy.
Look, and that is like, that is a masterclass in how to do politics, what you just laid out.
That's a masterclass in politics.
He did the thing that the right always does, which is they like look at what the letter of the rules and then figure out a way that those haven't been used yet so that people won't expect them to like take power in that way, right?
And they do it.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude.
So yeah, so that fool did that.
Little story about him when he was a teenager.
He shot a little Mexican boy, got away with it.
Yeah, Ramon Casiano.
Yeah.
15.
When he was 17.
When he was 17, he shot a little 15-year-old.
He used to lead the U.S., the U.S. Border Patrol.
started operation wetback you heard me yeah he started operation wetback right so this militarization of our borders yeah yeah and it's the birth of like the idea not just of like a border patrol but of a border patrol that's militarized and that can act anywhere near a border so right not just the southern border but anywhere within a hundred miles of a border which is like two-thirds of the u.s population there was just a supreme court ruling today on um Bivens,
which is like a, uh, this kind of precedent case that basically the Supreme Court said, actually, we don't think the federal government can regulate what the Border Patrol does in any way.
Like, damn.
That was essentially their claim that, like, well, yeah, Border Patrol like busts into your house.
They don't need a reason.
Wow.
Yeah.
Like, it's, it's a pretty fucked ruling.
We'll see how exactly it shakes out.
I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm not a lawyer and the ruling just came out.
But like, he's the start.
Like all of these fucking problems that we have with CBP, which is easily like our worst law enforcement agency, start with Harlan Carter.
Yeah.
The man, I got to think about that.
Yeah, it's pretty not great.
That's not dope.
But yeah, the, you know, slanging tanks to cops.
And obviously we have this like, you know, you, we have this bloated spending in our military, you know, for like wars they not fighting, right?
And you just got all this like, yeah, like insurgents fighting surplus stuff that you got to try to get your money back from.
And you just sell it to cops, right?
So when you sell it to cops and then what we talked about, you know, who we, we, I know I still get messages to this day about the behind the police thing.
Oh, God.
But yeah, like that's a super dope like recruiting video.
If it's like, dude, you want to, you want to shoot, you want to shoot a desert eagle?
You know what I'm saying?
You want to drive a tank, but you're afraid to go overseas to fight a war?
Yeah, people come shoot police.
Yeah.
You could die over there.
These people don't shoot back.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's such a great recruiting thing.
But anyway, you could trace that back to this fool, Harlan Carter.
Harlan Carter.
Gosh, I wish somebody would have slapped the shit out of him at some point.
I mean, it's the kind of thing where like he grows up.
His dad is, so this is one of the things the U.S.-Mexican border, as it is now in like the way that it is conceived of and thought of by people, maybe is like 100-ish years old, right?
Harlan Carter's Crimes00:02:04
Yes.
Because it used to just be like this area where people lived.
And technically, it was the border between two countries, but also like it took fucking, if you were like in the government in Austin in Texas, it took like days or weeks to get out there, right?
Yeah.
Like there were not like realistic concerns about immigration for a while because it was just like not within the state's capacity to really worry about too much.
This starts to change in the early 1900s.
And one of the first, like one of the thing that Harlan's Carter's dad is a part of, because he's one of like the very first border patrol agents.
There's a city called Laredo, which is where he grows up and where he kills Raymond Cassiano.
It's like a border town and it's primarily Mexican.
And it's so, and because it's primarily Mexican, it's run by Mexicans, right?
Yeah, because it was Mexico two decades ago.
And nobody really thought much about it.
Nobody thought about it.
The Border Patrol sends a guy in and he's like, holy fuck, all these Mexicans are in charge down here.
And like the Border Patrol is friendly with the local police who are Mexican.
We got to change that.
So they like clean house at the Border Patrol.
They send in guys and the Border Patrol like does drive-by shootings of the police station.
Yeah, yeah, it's fucking gang shit.
And they take over.
Like they take over the town in order to like force a white heart kind of like system over it, right?
And Harlan Carter's dad is the one doing that right at the same time that he murders a Mexican kid, claiming that he thought the kid had stolen his mom's car.
Like this kid is out by a swimming hole, by the way, when this happens.
So that's like Harlan Carter, like this was not like an accident.
Harlan Carter was a conscious soldier of white supremacy going out of his way to do it better.
And he was good at what he did, which is not great.
Not great at all.
White Supremacy Soldier00:03:19
Anyway.
Anyway, there's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
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So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Charlton Heston Moment00:15:56
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So, NRA, and they're going to take it from our cold, dead hands.
Thanks, Charleston Heston, you know, which, you know, brings us again more to the modern era where it became such a, again, an identity flashpoint as far as like, you know, it was almost like, like you said, this single person voters thing.
You could almost see this like mad, it's like this mad, like almost like hungry, hungry hippos.
This is like mad grab for what issue is going to belong to what people.
So like this identity around guns, it was just like Reagan and them was like, dips, you know what I'm saying?
Like that one's ours, right?
Yeah.
After he started gun control in California.
After he started gun control in California, which is like just the most bizarre thing.
So anyway, it brings us to why in the world, like how do you, how do you get to a place where surveyed of Republican gun owners who think that there are some laws that actually make sense, but won't nobody say nothing?
Why can't we get our elected officials to do what your people is asking you to do?
And it's easy to just be like, well, it's the NRA because it kind of fucking is.
But what, what do they got?
Like, why y'all so scared of them?
Like, that's one of the interesting questions that we could ask about politics.
Why are you so scared of them?
Like, what are what they got that we don't?
What's your guess?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it's a couple of things.
So the NRA, after he takes over, I think at 77.
Yeah.
The modern NRA, one of the moments that people will really say is like kind of the thing that like is a useful kind of chapter point in the history of the NRA is, I think it was 2000, when Charlton Heston, you know, holds that fucking ancient rifle up and says, for my whole day.
And again, it's at one of those, there was just an NRA meeting, right?
Like it's, it's one of those yearly members meetings that he does this.
That's generally picked as kind of the moment.
And part of why is that you have Carter steers it towards Second Amendment like absolutism and they start building on that.
They become very effective at lobbying, but they're not immediately effective.
And one of the areas in which you can see them being like less effective than they became is that in 1994, the assault weapons ban passes, right?
Yeah.
A lot of debate over the degree to which it worked.
There were less mass shootings under it.
Actual gun violence, not really different as a result of it.
Like overall, this gets into broader questions of like what gun violence actually looks like versus what gun violence tends to get on the news because AR-15s are not a particularly common gun used in gun violence compared to small handguns, which is like nearly the vast majority.
But anyway, that's outside of the point.
The assault weapons ban gets passed in 1994.
It is passed.
A lot of other stuff is happening, including you have Waco, you have Ruby Ridge, you have the Oklahoma City bombing in this kind of period immediately before and after the AWB.
So a lot of what happens with that is tied into the militia movement.
A lot of the militia movement is kind of born in the shadow of the assault weapons ban.
And the Republicans kind of, it takes, you know, it's in its law for about a decade, for a decade.
And then it comes up basically for renewal in 2004.
And by the time 2004 comes around, in that decade, the NRA has kind of solidified its position as the most effective fundraising arm of the Republican Party.
A few years, like 12 years after that, they'll give $30 million to Donald Bush's campaign, at least, right?
And like, you know, it's hard to actually know how much they give.
The bag is too big, though.
Yeah.
The bag is huge.
They give a lot, fuckload of money to George W. Bush.
And so George W. Bush does two things.
One, he does not, his administration, there's no attempt to renew the assault weapons ban.
And then the other thing he does, like the next year, there's a push by the NRA to put through this like law that makes it impossible, basically makes it impossible to sue gun manufacturers for what's done with their guns.
And there's a couple of other things that happened in a similar timeframe, including Republicans, and this is in the late 90s, early 2000s, strip all funding from the CDC to research gun violence and to research like what happens, like what is the health impact of guns writ large, right?
So all of this stuff is happening in this kind of decade after the passage of the assault weapons ban, which really accelerates the growth because they have this, the AWB is seen as this is proof that they're coming for everything, right?
Like this was the first, you'll get a lot of statements like registration means confiscation, all this kind of stuff, sometimes not helped by Democratic politicians who will literally say they want to confiscate all guns.
But you get this, that decade is really, and Carter is dead by this point, but he builds the machine that makes that decade of activism.
And this is really that 10-year period, 1994 to 2004 is the most effective period in the NRA's history.
They're influential after that, but obviously in the last couple of years, they've started to fall apart as an organization.
So really, Carter builds this machine and he hands it off to Wayne Lapierre.
And from 1994 to 2005 or six, it really, it lays a lot of the groundwork for making it kind of impossible to have, not to have conversations about gun control that are productive or to pass laws that are productive.
Because in 2000, you get Emerson v. United States, which is the first Supreme Court case that makes it, that, that recognizes the second as an individual right.
And it's not really clear entirely what that means until DC versus Heller in 2008.
And one of the things DC versus Heller says is that like you can't, you can't just say people can't own a class of firearm, right?
Yeah.
Like a handgun, right?
Like you can't just say no handguns, you know?
Yeah.
Like what Canada is attempting to do right now.
Like you're not allowed to do that.
And then in 2010, the Second Amendment gets incorporated.
So really that like 1994 to 2010 is kind of the most important period of actual things the NRA accomplishes.
And because of rampant corruption on behalf of LaPierre, they start to fall apart after that.
But the things that they've set up, both legally and culturally, and the cultural stuff particularly started under Carter because he was a big absolutist.
He was a big believer of they're coming for your guns.
This is like part of a communist takeover.
This is part of like people who are not white trying to take over the country.
And like we need these, you know, that is, yeah, that's what, that's what goes down.
Yeah.
Man, thanks for that.
Yeah.
That drying of the concrete that like, this is the discussion.
This is the only way we look at it.
And if you look at this any differently, you out the set.
Yeah.
Is is it it took that decade to get there?
And I'm even like tripping like, who's homie that just got like the homie that just got like, you know, busted for corruption that was leading it.
What's that homie's name?
Oh, fucking Wayne Lapierre.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was Wayne Lapierre.
But they still just, didn't they just read?
They just read up his leadership.
He's still in.
Like he's, there's some good, there's a good podcast on what happened in the NRA.
One sec.
I'm going to look this up because people should listen to it.
Cause it really goes into like how fucking corrupt and shitty he is.
Yeah.
But he's still in charge.
And I think that, I think that is a credit to how effective Carter was at turning the NRA into an unparalleled like political.
Yeah.
We've really never seen nothing like it.
That like, you no matter what anyone actually thinks or feels, you got to toe the line and you can't.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
So, and that, and the idea of like turning an issue into your very identity is a power that I feel like for this is like why hood politics exists.
Cause it's like, we understand that.
I understand how that happens.
You know what I'm saying?
Is that an issue becomes an identity and to break that is very, very, very difficult.
And another thing that the NRA does that Democrats have never understood and I don't know if they ever will is the political value of setting the definition because they're the worst at this.
They're unbelievably responsibly shitty.
And this is a thing.
I was a debate kid, right?
When you're doing a competition debate, you start with your definitions, right?
And there's a logical argument to be made.
If you're having an actual friendly debate over issues with like somebody that you care about and you're both willing to like learn something, it's very helpful to start with, here is what I mean when I say the first, you know, whatever, First Amendment.
Here's what I mean when I say like government, like liberty or whatever.
Like here's what I mean when I say, here's what I mean when I say a red flag law, right?
Yes.
Here's what, when I say red flag law, this is what I'm saying.
This is what I mean.
Right.
If you're having a good faith discussion, it's useful to do that because then you're not arguing against a shadow, right?
Like I think we've all been in a situation where you're like having an argument with somebody you care about and then you realize that you're not actually disagreeing.
You just are defining different, it's the same thing in different ways.
And so like that's where the argument's coming up.
That happens between people of goodwill.
If you're not a person of goodwill, if you want to just like fuck the discussion, then you, and again, the right does this with everything.
You hop in and you say a red flag law means a law that will allow the police to take guns away from Republicans because they because they believe in this or they believe in that.
Like they'll define, you know, that is a, and, and this is, again, part of what's toxic about this is that it, it makes it impossible to have important discussions.
So an important discussion about a red flag law is, okay, we're saying we want to take guns away from people who are violent, people who make threats.
Let's make sure this law is written in such a way that the police cannot just say, well, I think being a BLM organizer is mentally unstable.
So let's go bust into this guy's house and take his gun.
And oh, he got shot.
That's a real fear.
It's a real fear that they might say, oh, if you're trans, that's a mental illness.
You don't get to have guns.
That is a real legitimate fear.
Absolutely.
And of course, to be entirely fair, it's not unreasonable for conservatives to be like, well, if you're going to make a red flag law, I want to know that you're not going to define my politics as making me unfair.
Like that is not an unreasonable fear.
But when you just say that's what this is, and when you start fear mongering about it, then there cannot be a discussion about it, right?
You have defined the law in such a way that, like, this is, and if you're, if you had more competent people who were Democrats about this sort of thing, they would be pushing against that.
And I think doing stuff more like saying, let we want a law to take guns from people who hit their wives and kids, right?
We want a law to take guns away from people who threaten mass shootings, right?
Clear.
That's what we want, right?
Yeah.
That's harder to fight than like just saying, we want a red flag.
Defined a red, like, right.
This is again, and this is what the NRA pioneers this.
And now it's everything, right?
Now it's like the right is in the process of defining support for LGBT rights as like support for grooming.
As grooming, right?
Yes.
It's like, yeah, if you say this, then that means you're that.
And by the time you start arguing with them, because some chunk of people are going to get, are going to like get caught up in that and will start like being like, well, obviously I don't like this or I don't like that.
And so like, this must not be okay.
And so like, let's have a discussion about what stuff we should ban.
And like, then you're on their side, right?
Yeah.
No matter what, even if you think you're being reasonable, you have yielded the floor to these fuckers.
And that's, that's, yeah.
And that's really like, really, that's like, that to me, what you're saying is dope.
Cause that's like, that's, that's the type of training, like you said, like a lot of us need to have to where it's like, I'm not going to let you define my terms.
And, and it's, this especially reigns true for black people because you're now all of a sudden, and I feel like black people is not letting you have it.
Like, you can't define woke.
I don't care what the fuck you say it is.
That's not what it is.
You know what I'm saying?
You can't define critical race theory.
You just telling each other that's what it means.
Yeah.
We know that's not what it means.
I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
You know what I'm saying?
What they've done with, sorry, yeah, but like that's incredibly important what you said.
What they've done with critical race theory is the same shit.
It's the NRA playbook.
And it makes it impossible.
It makes it impossible for you to have a productive discussion and it makes it impossible for them to, it makes it impossible for their voters to think about stuff.
Because like if you actually, I mean, among other things, yeah, it's yeah, my biggest fight with that is most of the time is like, you don't even know what it means.
So I can't even, I don't even know what we're arguing over.
Like, because you don't know what it means.
What you're saying is not critical race theory.
What you're saying is teaching about history.
You're scared of a boogeyman that isn't real.
You're scared of a boogeyman that isn't real.
And you made that up and now you're willing to engage with it.
It's not happening.
Yes.
Like what you are afraid of is not a thing.
Yeah.
And you need to, like, you're just trying to justify censorship.
Like, that's the, that's the appropriate response, but they keep getting caught up.
And this is, it's amazing.
Again, one of the things that's important about studying Carter and studying the history of the NRA is this is a very old set of strat tactics.
Super old.
And it extra, it's, um, in a lot of ways, it's like early shit posting, right?
Right.
But you, there's not, they're not, I haven't seen the fucking Dims figure out a solution to this shit yet.
Um, I think I know how to deal with it.
Um, but it's also like it's So much is caught up.
So much of like our potential to have a future is caught up in whether or not people who are in politics figure out how to deal with this bad faith shit.
Yeah.
And I, I, I don't think they are.
And part of it is that they have built their fundraising arm around the terms that the right has successfully defined to their people in a specific way.
Yeah.
Right.
And so instead of having more productive discussions about some of this stuff and more productive discussions about like how to protect people, it all occurs within this kind of, this kind of framework of like catchphrases that are good at getting the base riled up and getting fun and good at putting together.
It's like this shit with like the governor of Louisiana, right?
Democrat.
Yeah.
There's this anti-trans, you know, kid in sports law that just like passed.
He could have vetoed it.
Instead, he neglected, he said he was not going to veto it, but posted like a tearful video about how much he supports trans kids.
Yes.
And like, I'm sure he's going to fundraise off that, right?
Like, it's going to be fine, but you could do something.
Louisiana Anti-Trans Law00:05:22
Yeah.
I, I, I flashed to a moment years, years, years back during the uh, the bathroom thing.
You know, we was arguing over bathrooms.
I remember there was a lady at our church we used to go to that passed us, me and my, me and my wife.
I'm like, hey, what do you guys think about the bathroom thing?
We were like, it's fine.
I don't care.
Like, you're my house.
My house is a gender neutral battle.
Have you ever been to a beach?
Like, those are all Jay.
Like, what are you talking about?
Like, this is stupid.
And I remember the way that she looked at me, like, her eyes got big and she was just like, dude, I told like whispering, I totally agree.
I don't understand the big deal.
I don't like whispering, like, like afraid to say, yeah, I think this is, yeah, I don't understand what the hubbub's about.
And I was like, that's, that's what I'm talking about.
Like, you know, even, even, even the stuff that's being defined to you as such, you're like, well, that's stupid.
You know, like, okay, so all of a sudden, sexual assaults, sexual assaults are going to happen if we have gender neutral bathrooms, like as if sexual assaults don't already happen.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, so just this like hole in the logic that at your core, you like, well, not even at your core, just like in the front of your mind, you're like, this, well, that don't even, it, it, that don't bother me the way you're telling me it's supposed to bother me.
So your question is, am I tripping or are y'all tripping?
And what I want all my listeners to say here to realize is like, nah, you're not tripping.
This is bullshit.
It really is.
You ain't got to like, you ain't got it.
You ain't got to, you ain't got to toe they line.
You ain't got a toe day line.
If you honestly, especially around this thing, like, don't be afraid to tell, you know, young seventh grade prop, when your gang is chasing me, hey, homie, you got to get out the bathroom because they're going to jump you.
And I think that's stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, well, I mean, there's probably more that should be said about this.
Yeah.
I get like, you know, I come at this from a fundamentally different perspective than a lot of Democrats because I am something of an absolutist in the right to self-defense and the right to be armed.
Fundamentally, I don't think the cop should be able to own anything that I can't.
And I'm not wild about the idea of a national military, of a standing national military.
But like, and, you know, obviously there's people on the left side of the pro-gun movement who are absolutely no, no compromise, no law type things.
I'm not.
I tend to think there's shit you can do.
Like, I don't know.
I'm not against the idea of fucking like waiting periods inherently.
I think there should be some option for, like, if you've already got a collection or a CHL, like, why would a waiting period apply to you?
You already have guns.
It's not like it's going to matter.
But, like, yeah, there's enough people who like buy a gun and kill themselves that day, or enough people who like buy a gun, like that fucking guy who shut up that hospital on the same day.
And maybe if you could cool him down, right?
Like, again, there's stuff I think that can be done and that should be talked about.
Because even though I don't think the overall, I don't think the fundamental solutions to the fundamental problems that we're talking about today, any of them will be done by voting or passing laws because it's too big, you know?
Like, fundamentally, you're dealing with fucking white supremacy here and you're not going to vote it out.
Yeah.
And also, I don't think you should stop people who are poor or like of normal income from being able to arm themselves, which is another thing Democrats keep proposing.
It's like, yeah, let's put a thousand percent excise tax on an AR-15.
So it's $5,000.
Well, that's okay.
Okay, so only rich people should have the brain.
That's the is that what's going to make it?
Yeah, Because the kid at fucking Uvalde just got a credit card and bought like a three or four thousand dollar firearm and like managed it because he didn't care about paying it back.
So like maybe let's talk about some other solutions here.
But yeah, so I have, I come, I come at this from like a different position, but I do think it's immoral to be like, let's just not talk about doing anything because I don't like like it's people are fucking like Uvalde, Parkland, fucking Sandy Hook.
Like it's fucked up to say like, well, there's nothing that should be attempted here.
Or to say, let's just turn schools into fortresses.
I don't like that.
That's not good for kids.
That's not good for anything.
So I think like, I would love it if we could do something.
Yeah.
But also, I think it is, it's, it's also immoral to it's immoral fundamentally if you are the not a Democratic voter, but if you are a Democrat in power, it is immoral to not be fucking better at seeing what these people are doing and how they get away with what they're doing.
And the fact that they haven't for so fucking long and it extends everywhere.
It's CRT, it's the anti-transpanic.
It's all the same playbook.
You have to fucking understand what they're doing and actually fight it effectively as opposed to just use the fear of the fuckery that they're doing to drive people to like register to vote blue no matter who.
And if they were actually doing that, the right wouldn't be winning as often as they are.
Fighting The Right Playbook00:03:21
He preaching.
That boy preaching.
Nah, you're right, man.
It's like when you're just trying to put your finger on Jell-O, you're just going to be chasing, chasing the globs.
And that's basically what Democrats are doing.
They just chasing these globs, playing whack-a-mole.
And it's funny to watch in funny in a horrible way, in a sense that they're just like, yeah, nah, keep chasing us.
You know, you're just, you're just swinging a person around, you know, and laughing as you're doing it.
You know what I'm saying?
So yeah, nah, nailed it.
Yeah.
Thank you for that, Robert.
Thank you.
This was fun.
Yeah, dog.
Like, dude, I mean, everybody knows who you are already.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, I got it.
I got a, I got it.
I got a book.
It's called After the Revolution.
You can find it everywhere right now, including on the Amazons if you are so inclined.
Man, that book is very fun.
Thank you.
I enjoy it.
You know, fun in an entertaining, still pretty sad.
Yeah, it was fun in an entertaining, still pretty sad way to write.
Yeah.
All right.
And Sophie right there.
Get off, get off there, Sophie.
Say what's up.
There it is.
Sophie is the greatest at holding her tongue when she has comments.
I've never seen nobody so good at it.
She sure does.
Anyway, well, that's the show.
It'll probably be, this will most likely be the second part because this is over an hour.
And because that boy Robert got hot.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
I'm going to have Matt play some organ hits under there.
You know what I'm saying?
Make you sound like a preacher.
All right.
Anyway, all right.
Show's over.
Yeah, this here thing was recorded by me propaganda in East Los Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California.
This mug was mixed, edited, mastered, and scored by Matt Osowski.
I can totally say his name, guys.
It was, it was a shtick.
He's going by Matt now again because he got into some legal situations with the name headlights.
Y'all know common used to be called common sense.
Y'all know tip.
T.I. was tipped.
Sometimes it happens.
Executive produced by the one and only Sophie Lichterman for CoolZone Media and the theme music by the one and only Go Tips, Go Tips, DJ Sean P.
So y'all just remember, listen, every time you check in, if you understand city living, you understand politics.
See y'all next week.
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See You Next Week00:01:40
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