Debunking Democrats on Gun Control in the Wake of Boulder
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Some unfortunate news has developed in the last 24 hours.
Last evening, a shooter, and we're still trying to figure out his motive, went into a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, beautiful Boulder, Colorado, and opened fire, killed 10 people.
What would drive someone to do something so brutal, so evil, and so disgusting is quite honestly hard to even comprehend.
In the last year, as we've been doing our program, our whole country has been locked down, and there was a rather significant decrease in mass shootings just because there weren't massive groups of people.
People were clustered at home.
But now, unfortunately, we have seen in the last couple of days, actually in the last week, two mass shootings, one in Atlanta and one in Colorado.
With Joe Biden being president, we know exactly what's about to happen.
Our constitutional rights are going to come under attack and are going to be put in jeopardy.
Now, I don't like politicizing these shootings.
It's a tragedy.
And whatever the motive of this person was, we must find that out.
It's very important.
I feel for the victims' families, and I feel for anyone that was impacted by either of those shootings.
However, all of this also takes place in a context where violent crime is rising dramatically, not just in certain areas, but across the country.
Violent crime is up in New York City.
It's up in Los Angeles.
It's up in Chicago.
And we must understand that all of this takes place in a context where last year there were 719 people shot and killed in Chicago.
A person was shot every two hours and six minutes.
A person is murdered every 11 hours and six minutes.
Now, I know a lot of people say, Charlie, that's what about is?
You must focus on the issue at hand.
Well, the issue at hand is actually a statistical outlier.
Mass shootings are not the norm in our country.
And this is going to reinvigorate a gun debate in America, one that we are less equipped to have in this current state of political affairs than in years past.
The National Rifle Association is going through some internal difficulties right now.
And I am told by a lot of people on their board that they're going to arise stronger than ever.
And I sure hope that's the case, that they've been under attack from the Democrat Attorney General, Letitia James, nonstop from New York.
We are also seeing that Joe Biden is going to make gun control a primary concern, a primary focus of his administration.
So why do we have the Second Amendment?
Do we have the Second Amendment for personal protection?
Do we have the Second Amendment for hunting?
Both of those things are important, obviously, to be able to protect your family in case of civil unrest or to be able to go hunting.
No.
We have the Second Amendment to protect ourselves against the threat of tyranny.
That is the proper explanation of the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment is the amendment that protects all the other amendments.
And I know that it could be very difficult to talk about this when this scumbag goes into a grocery store and just opens fire, indiscriminately killing people, 10 people.
And we're going to find out exactly what he stood for, and we will get to the bottom of that.
However, we should not, and we will not go in a direction in our country where we start to sacrifice our freedoms, our God-given freedoms of self-protection and the freedom of preserving the other freedoms because some lunatic goes into a grocery store and starts opening fire.
I'm reading here from the postmillennial.com, quote, a witness told Fox 31 Denver that they heard a sound like fireworks when they were leaving the store and saw a man in the parking lot holding an AR-15 style weapon and wearing tactical gear.
The witness reportedly ran back into the store to alert people.
Democrat Governor Jared Polis says, quote, my heart is breaking as we watch this unspeakable event unfold in our Boulder community.
We are making every public safety resource available.
And he has a full statement there.
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, said, quote, my prayers are with the shoppers, employees, first responders, and others affected by the shooting in Boulder.
May God be with them.
While we are still waiting, important information, details in the case, random public shootings and senseless acts of violence are never okay.
She is exactly right.
And the district attorney and the police have successfully arrested him, which is very rare.
Usually, shooters like this die or kill themselves in one of these unspeakably evil rampages.
So, what we see happening, unfortunately, is that the Democrats are already beginning their gun control narrative.
In fact, from Newsweek this morning, the headline from Newsweek was that this is finally something that the Democrats can rally behind.
It seems as if the Democrats were a little bit on defense in the last couple of days, especially what was happening on the southern border.
Democrats have always been able to unite on taking Second Amendment rights away.
It says here in Newsweek, quote, Colorado shooting, new rallying cry for Democrats.
And it goes on to say that Democrats are already calling for stricter gun laws as a result of what happened in Colorado.
We're going to go through all the numbers here on this program throughout the next days and weeks because we're about to have a gun debate that will heat up into one of the most consequential public policy debates when it comes to Second Amendment rights and personal protection in the history of our country.
We have seen two mass shootings.
We have a Democrat in office.
We have Democrats that do not want to talk about the border.
And so they would much rather talk about taking firearms away from innocent people because a scumbag decided to use a certain weapon for evil.
Remember, a gun, a weapon, is nothing more than a piece of technology.
It's what you do with it.
It's what you do with a car.
It's what you do with a phone.
It's what you do with an axe.
It's what you do with any form of technology.
Now, a gun, obviously, can make it easier to kill people.
It also can be easier to protect yourself.
We are about to have a national debate.
And I hope it's not a long one, because when it's long, it usually means that the Democrats get some sort of policy goal passed that will be centered around taking people's Second Amendment rights away.
The Second Amendment, and the Founding Fathers wrote extensively about this in the Federalist Papers, is the amendment that protects all the other amendments.
People say we just want common sense gun control.
They want to create a national gun registry.
They want to be able to have federal bureaucrats confiscate weapons nearly on demand.
They're also wanting to criminalize the possession and the purchasing of ammunition.
This last year, we've learned a lot about whether or not people want to be free, whether or not people want to embrace liberty.
Unfortunately, the answer has been no.
Republicans last week voted, eight of them, for increased gun control measures.
You're going to see that number go up.
These are the policy debates that are hard.
These are the ones that are really important when tensions are high and when emotions are dominating the news cycle.
And for good reason, we should be emotional about this piece of garbage that went into a grocery store and killed 10 people.
We must have this debate based on facts, based on evidence, and not allow an unspeakable tragedy to infringe on our constitutional rights.
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There's going to be a lot of conversation around gun control in our country, and yet our leaders do not want to talk about what's happening in my hometown of Chicago.
I'm reading from Breitbart.com: quote: A Chicago man has been accused of a shooting spree that wounded two, including a police officer, reportedly saying he was trying to lure police into an ambush.
Tracy Thomas Jr. was hit with five felony counts of attempted murder of a police officer after his arrest on Saturday.
So I'm from the suburbs of Chicago.
I know Chicago very well.
You look at the statistics in Chicago, it's horrifying.
If we were serious about talking about violent crime in our country, Chicago would be the top of our list.
Year to date in Chicago, there's been 114 people shot and killed, 530 people shot and wounded, 644 people total shot, and 120 total homicides.
So I am not disqualifying the pain, the suffering, and the tragedy of what just happened in Colorado.
However, this all comes in a context where violent crime is going up everywhere.
And it's not about the type of weapon.
Most of the murders happening in Chicago are handguns.
They are not AR-15s.
They are not long rifles.
Now, I'm happy to explain weapons to people, but an AR-15 is not an automatic weapon.
It's not.
Now, you can illegally configure it to be an automatic weapon.
However, an AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon.
Essentially, you have to pull the trigger every single time you discharge a bullet.
That's a very important technical difference because we're about to have a bunch of people on cable television have no idea what they're talking about.
And no, AR does not mean automatic rifle.
It's Arma-light rifle.
We went through all of these different policy debates years ago after the tragedy in Broward, Florida, at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.
You all remember the tragedy that happened there.
But Chicago is something that the left does not want to talk about.
Democrats run all of Chicago, top to bottom.
There are no Republicans in elected office in Chicago, which, by the way, is not a clear representation or a picture of the people of Chicago.
There are so many decent people in Chicago.
And I have so many friends in Chicago, Lithuanian immigrants, Polish immigrants, Ukrainian immigrants, that are not being represented in Chicago right now by Lori Lightfoot, who's an awful mayor.
And when we look at where the majority of violent crime in our country with weapons is occurring, it is not in suburbia.
It's not mass shootings.
Instead, it is gang violence in the inner cities of our country.
It's Chicago.
It's Oakland.
It's Houston.
It's Minneapolis.
It's Atlanta.
And every single death is a tragedy.
But when you try to craft public policy around a singular event, that's usually a really bad idea.
Usually, public policy should come from the position of the protection of natural rights.
Now, here's why I am worried today as we are speaking on this beautiful Tuesday.
I'm worried because we have learned in the last year that people would rather be taken care of and they will go to safetyism much quicker than liberty.
Liberty is hard.
Liberty requires a sacrifice.
Liberty comes at a price.
You see, liberty is being willing to admit that things can go wrong, that people can abuse that liberty.
But we embrace liberty for a reason because the benefits of liberty far outweigh the costs of having that freedom.
And imagine not having that liberty.
Imagine not being able to speak your mind, not being able to buy private property, not being able to have your right to privacy, not being able to protect yourself.
So I'm afraid.
I'm a little bit afraid right now because what we have seen in the last year with the mask mandates, the lockdowns, is an American population that is more in the direction of being safetyism than liberty.
And that is the framing of the debate that will be raging in our country for the next couple of days and the next couple of weeks.
When we dive into the statistics of this, you will be stunned when you learn that the Democrats and the gun grabbers, they're intentionally misrepresenting gun issues in our country.
The gun grabbers are already dominating the news cycle.
They have found an issue that fits their narrative.
So Democrats will always ignore stories that make them look bad.
And if you just look at the statistics, when it comes to what weapons are contributing to gun violence in our country, handguns are the number one firearm used when it comes to gun deaths in America, most of which are gang-related.
7,105 gun deaths were handgun-related.
374 were rifles, 262 shotguns, and 186 other guns.
Now, you are going to hear it repeated time and time again that there are 30,000 gun deaths every single year in America.
So you will hear the mantra repeated over and over again: 30,000 people a year die of gun violence in America.
There's a phenomenal piece that was written in the Washington Post.
That's right, you heard me.
A couple years ago.
And the title was, I used to think gun control is the answer.
My research told me otherwise.
So 33,000 sounds like a lot of people.
But let's start with the top-line number.
Did you know that we're the only country in the world that counts death with a firearm as suicide, as a firearm death?
That's two-thirds of the 33,000 figure, two-thirds.
The story says, quote, I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn't prove much about what America's policy should be.
It's exactly right.
It continues by saying, as my coworkers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun control restriction could make a big difference.
Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every single year are suicides.
Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder with guns on hand to use them.
I couldn't even answer my most desperate question.
And if I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, is there anything I could do that would help?
Leah Labresco.
Leah Labresco is her name.
And she goes on to say here, which is very interesting when it comes to a statistical analysis of what is happening in America when it comes to gun violence.
And she says this: quote, However, the next largest set of gun deaths, one in five, were young men ages 15 to 34 killed in homicides.
These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence.
She continues by saying, and the last notable group of similar deaths was 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as a result of domestic violence.
Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
So this is Leah Labresco for the Washington Post, and it says, quote, I used to think gun control is the answer.
My research told me otherwise.
So the more you dive in actually into the data, you realize that this is a highly complicated issue.
And it specialized to a couple cities and a couple demographics, mostly gang-related violence.
Now, what happened in Colorado was a tragedy.
I'm not going to make light of it.
I'm not going to say that we should minimize it.
However, it comes in a context and it comes in a framework that we must remind ourselves and remind others that violent crime is going up in most cities across the country.
The cities that it isn't going up in are cities that have open carry and they have legal ownership of firearms.
Those cities are not seeing massive increases.
New York City has a historic increase in violent crime right now.
And New York City has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
Mass shootings are actually quite rare.
I know that comes as a surprise to some people because you remember them so vividly.
But mass shootings actually represent a tiny share of all shooting deaths.
This is actually from the liberal website, Vox.com.
Vox.com.
Mass shootings represent a tiny share of all shooting deaths.
Quote, there has been a rash of heavily publicized mass shootings in recent years.
This is from a year and a half ago.
But those incidents, while tragic, are actually a tiny sliver of America's gun homicide program.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, analyzing FBI data, found that fewer than 1% of homicide victims in 2010 were killed in incidents, where four more people died.
And by the way, if you want to find these articles, I know that some of you are going to want them or need them for some of your liberal friends that are calling for gun confiscation right now.
CharlieKirk.com is the place for you.
We will offer links to this Vox.com article and the Washington Post article.
Vox, which is a liberal website, makes the argument that mass shootings are actually not the major issue when it comes to violence or gun violence.
Suicide and gang-related violence are.
Now, some people might say, well, Charlie, that only proves our point that if we get rid of guns, we'll get rid of gang-related violence.
Go to London.
In London, they have massive amounts of crime unrelated to firearms.
They actually have a higher rate of violent crime in certain parts of London than any part of major cities, including Chicago.
Knife crime, mugging, jumping people on the side of the street.
Now, some people would say, well, Charlie, a firearm is more deadly.
I'll grant that.
However, to say that you're going to eliminate all violent encounters altogether on some sort of pipe dream of gun confiscation is unrealistic and it is immoral and it's unconstitutional.
So, if you actually dive into the numbers deeper, I think you'll realize that this gun control debate is not rooted in facts, data, or evidence in any way, shape, or form.
Joe Biden, I'm going to make a prediction right now.
Joe Biden is going to talk about this for the next couple of days, and so is the activist media.
And this comes on the heels of another news item when it comes to Joe Biden.
That's not about gun control and not about gun confiscation.
We're getting a lot of emails in right now, freedom at charliekirk.com.
We will post these at charliekirk.com, all these articles, the Vox.com article, as well as the Washington Post article that was, quote, I used to think gun control is the answer.
My research told me otherwise.
But I want to get to this other story here that Joe Biden released, and it was just kind of a non-news story.
Joe Biden and his team of radicals are unveiling a $3 trillion infrastructure, climate, and welfare bill.
I'm reading from the wonderful Breitbart.com.
We also have this on CharlieKirk.com.
Quote: President Joe Biden's White House team is drafting a $3 trillion infrastructure spending package, according to reports, but most of the spending will be directed towards social welfare programs.
Now, I want to be very clear.
I'm actually pro-infrastructure.
If there was a way to do infrastructure in a pro-worker, pro-American, pro-21st century way, I'm all for it.
I really am.
Public-private partnerships, building smarter airports, a smarter grid.
I think that the American infrastructure has been deteriorated over the years.
And I want to put the muscular class back to work.
I want to put our designers.
I want to put our innovators.
I want to put our construction workers back to work.
However, most times these infrastructure packages end up being massive handouts to unions.
They end up being inefficient, decade-long construction projects that cause traffic and they cause disruption in local areas.
They end up being filled with corruption and not actually contributing to economic growth.
However, Dwight D. Eisenhower did prove that certain infrastructure programs are good for the American economy.
I think it's a good thing that America has an interstate highway system.
Now, some strict libertarians will say that should be all done with private money.
I think a private-public partnership at times is fine.
The Chicago Skyway, for example, is a private-public partnership.
There's other examples as well.
But sometimes there is a role for the government to provide with taxpayer dollars, infrastructure to allow commerce to occur.
How many people here are going to be taking road trips over the summer thanks to the interstate highway system we have in our country?
Our goods, our services, our packages that are delivered to us in almost a moment's notice is made possible thanks to our infrastructure.
And our infrastructure is crumbling.
This is something that President Trump was spot on about.
But Joe Biden's infrastructure package, it's not even about that.
Instead, it's about $400 billion in green spending.
Other reporting spending measures in the proposal include trillion-dollar proposals for welfare, including tuition reductions among minorities, healthcare initiatives, and more.
Not to mention, what about the debt?
What about the debt and deficit?
You know, I got my start at Turning Point USA complaining about rising debt and deficits, and both parties are to blame.
And I love Donald Trump, and I'm a defender of his.
But the part of his presidency that was my least favorite was our escalating national debt and our deficit.
And I will do a podcast in the near future all about the national security threat that our national debt poses to our country.
Not to mention how we are going to have to inflate our way out of it or cut spending, which it seems as if our leaders are totally uninterested in cutting spending.
So Joe Biden has this humongous $3 trillion infrastructure package on top of the $1.9 trillion package, on top of the $1 trillion package, on top of the $4 trillion federal government spending, on top of the $2 trillion stimulus package in one year.
Yes, inflation is coming.
The dollar will be worth less, not worthless, worth less very soon.
And almost none of this spending will encourage economic growth.
So Joe Biden is spending all this money.
Why is he doing this?
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Why is Joe Biden spending all of this money?
Why is Joe Biden spending trillions of dollars?
We're at a point right now where the Democrats have made a decision, kind of like the old show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Where the currency means nothing and deficits don't matter, so we might as well spend it.
The Democrats know the only way to get out of debt is to inflate our way out of it.
So Democrats have a secret deal with the Federal Reserve to pump unlimited amounts of capital into the monetary system.
Might as well spend money when you can and make the ruling class richer, while working people that work hour to hour and do not have the ability to adjust prices or own tangible assets are going to get crushed.
Why is Joe Biden doing that?
Well, when the working class gets crushed, they're more likely to go on government assistance.
They're more likely to go on public welfare, which has always been the Democrats' goal.
Those are reliable voters.
Those are people that they can count on to support their perpetual power grab on the American people.
Spending money we do not have on welfare programs and inflating our currency on things that will not spur economic growth is part of an agenda that we have seen time and time again from the Democrats to destroy the American working class and addict them to government programs.
I wish Democrats would operate in good faith.
I wish Democrats would actually be concerned about the debt and the deficit, would actually want to put forward bills that would be in the best interest of the American people.
Instead, we have the opposite.
Instead, we have Democrats that are so confident they'll always be in power that after they spend a trillion, two trillion, four trillion, one trillion, $1.9 trillion, they want to put another three on top of it.
They want to inflate the currency, which will also give an excuse to bring more people into the country, both illegal and legal, because that can be a hedge against inflation.
And the cycle will repeat itself.
We are now entering into a very dangerous long-term debt cycle, similar to Japan.
We're never going to find that next round of economic growth, but the rich people in our country are going to do just fine.
The other part of this, which is very important to point out, is that the Democrats don't actually want robust middle-class growth, they want ruling-class growth.
They want the people in charge to be permanently powerful.
Entrepreneurs, risk takers, small business owners, they're the ones that are getting crushed by these lockdowns.
Meanwhile, Bezos and Zuckerberg and all these other guys have a combined net worth of $300 billion, just Bezos and Zuckerberg, nearly $300 billion.
That's not healthy for our country.
And the spending spree from the Federal Reserve and Joe Biden and the Treasury Department is putting our generation and future generations in a position of financial insolvency that will be impossible to get out.
The only way that we'll be able to get out is by inflating the currency, spending money we do not have endlessly.
And we'll just say, you know what?
We have six to seven inflation every year.
Get used to it.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.