Twitter is targeting conservatives again. I need your help to fight back. I address the ongoing media effort to silence conservative voices in the debate over firearms and public safety.
Is the United States really the most violent developed country? Or is the Left deceiving you again?
Are mass shootings on the rise?
Criminals do not care about gun laws. The evidence is everywhere.
Can the president obstruct justice in the Russia probe?
Did the Australian gun ban work?
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Feeling groovy, Dan-o.
Way to go.
Man, what a... Folks, it's just...
It's, you know, for my loyal listeners out there and the folks who listen to the show occasionally, I really appreciate your support, but I need you now more than I've needed you in a while.
I don't mean to be hyperbolic or melodramatic, no need for unnecessary emotion in this, but For some reason, actually I think we all know the reason, there's been this non-stop assault going on on conservative thought on social media and elsewhere and there's been efforts ongoing for a very long time to silence conservatives.
My Twitter account last night got Banned from promoting ads.
No one will give us a reason why.
What?
Yeah, Joe.
So I'm going to go into this a little bit during the show.
I've also been under attack for basically every media appearance I do on the firearm and Second Amendment issue.
It happened again last night.
People, they're just making things up now.
A lot of these reporters and folks, they're using The emotions surrounding this tragedy to really silence people who have a voice in this and and want it really are genuinely Interested in in fixing this problem and folks.
It's disgusting.
It's unbelievable.
What's happening?
I'll give you some details during the show But yeah, I do need your help and I'm gonna ask something of you if if you don't mind during the show today I'm sorry if I sound a little Discombobulated, but it's been a long night for me with my wife trying to go through my Twitter account and figuring out what, what, what was so, uh, you know, wrong.
And we genuinely folks can't, we're not like playing dumb with you.
I can't figure it out.
The only thing I can figure out we did wrong is, um, we're conservatives and there's a serious viewpoint discrimination going on over Twitter and in other places, but it's just getting really, really troubling.
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All right, so what happened here?
Last night, I'm at CPAC for those of you who are coming down.
I was coming down from New York.
I had a really busy day yesterday.
I don't give you all a lot of behind the scenes because this is an hour show and Joe and I are very concerned about giving you quality content in a short period of time.
That's why I don't go into a lot of personal stories, but the personal story in this case is the story.
So, I was really busy yesterday.
I was up at Fox, and I was doing a lot of media appearances.
I did one in the morning for Fox and Friends, and I did Brian Kilmeade's radio show up at Fox News Radio.
I then came down and did Outnumbered.
I then jumped on a train back to D.C.
and went right to the Tucker Carlson studio.
For those of you who don't know, Tucker Carlson's studio at Fox is in D.C.
The rest of those places, Outnumbered and Fox and Friends, Or up in New York.
So to say I had a really busy day yesterday would be an understatement.
Again, it was great.
I don't like whiny snowflake-ism.
It was a good day, but it was busy.
I say that because it's really tough, folks, to go on the air.
Basically, yesterday, between phoners, I did two phone interviews, four or five times, and to say the same thing in different ways.
Do you get what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
I mean, Joe's been in the radio business a long time, and you know what I'm saying, Joe, right?
I mean, you get a guest on, who's a frequent guest on your radio show there in the morning at WCBM, and what makes a good guest a good guest is you learn how to say the same thing in different ways to keep people interested in fresh content.
Make sense?
Yeah.
I bring this up, folks, because this is difficult.
We're talking about unbelievably difficult topics right now.
What happened down in Parkland is not easy to talk about when three million people are watching in prime time and during the morning, and millions are listening on the radio, and in a case of Joe and I at our podcast program here, millions of people a month.
It's not easy to do this all the time.
It's especially difficult to do it when what you say and what you're going to say you know is not going to be popular but you believe is right.
Joe and I don't say things here and we don't take positions because we believe they're politically advantageous.
We say things because we think they're right and we think we're defending first principles and real principles and your liberty.
Having said that, I am a contributor for NRA TV.
That's not a secret.
I said it on Outnumbered.
We said it on Fox.
It's on my Twitter handle.
It's not a secret.
It's not meant to be a secret.
I'm happy to do it.
I enjoy working there.
But every time I go on television to talk about what happened in Parkland and propose something, That I believe is an actual fix to the problem.
And I also discuss things which I think are obstacles to solving the problem.
I find myself under absolutely relentless attack by media hacks who just cannot, they cannot stand an opposing view.
Joe, the only acceptable view right now, and I haven't told Joe any of this, the only acceptable view right now, the only thing you are allowed to say Is gun control, gun control, gun control, and if you don't say it, you are to be ostracized, you are to be shut up, and you are to be in effect media shadow banned.
I mean, it's everywhere, folks.
It's Mediaite.
It's the Daily Beast.
I'm not going to link to their articles, but here's what happened.
So last night I was on Tucker's show, and I did an appearance on the show, and we were talking about the student protests.
And no matter what you say, Joe, they will destroy, convolute, and tear up your words and make it sound like you're saying something you're not.
Tucker and I were absolutely, Joe, crystal clear.
You can watch the hit yourself.
It's up there.
I'm sure somebody has it somewhere.
Just Google Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino.
And on the hit, we specifically made the point that the kids who were involved in this, in this unbelievable incident, I mean, I remember because I can't even imagine what it must have been like.
How they absolutely have the right, of course, To speak up.
Matter of fact, I made the point that their voices would be very valuable in this.
Especially with regard, Joe.
I mean, let's watch the hit with regard to missed signals.
Don't you think, Joe?
Like, if you wanted to find out what was wrong with a kid in a high school and how the FBI and the local sheriff's department missed all the signs, who do you want to talk to, Joe?
You want to talk to the kids he was surrounding with.
These kids and teenagers that were involved in this have an unbelievably valuable voice.
I simply made the point that what I find odd in the media, and again, just watch the hit, folks.
Watch the appearance.
Sorry, using media jargon here.
I made the point, Jo, that I think, ironically, the media is focusing more on these teenagers and their take on supply-side gun control measures, which is, as I said, verbatim, a complicated and layered issue, Where I think it requires you to study what happened, what happened in Australia, what happened when they've instituted gun bans, what happened with the assault weapons ban and the Clinton administration.
These are complicated issues.
They're relying on these teenagers and that they're using them to advocate for an agenda on that end, which is fine.
Let me be crystal clear.
These kids have Beyond the right to speak out.
They've been through something horrible.
But they're not focusing on where I think these kids could be of enormous benefit.
Which is how all these signs were missed.
What did these kids see in Cruz?
They're not focusing on any of that.
And the point I was trying to make is this isn't like the kids agenda.
The kids can say and should say whatever they feel like saying right now.
I was simply making the point that the media is minimizing that end of it to advance their agenda, Joe, not the kids' agenda.
These teenagers are not, you get what I'm saying?
Oh yeah, yeah.
And what I find odd is when it comes to other situations where victims of crime have a voice, the media's really not interested in their story.
In other words, Joe, think about victims of terrorism.
Victims of crime from illegal immigrants.
Do you see them?
I mean, these families don't get the voice and the platform.
I mean, to the extent.
I'm sure they've been interviewed.
I don't want to be, I don't want to do what the media doesn't and lie about it.
But are they getting the platform that other victims?
And I just find it interesting.
It's not a knock on anyone other than the media for hypocritically saying one thing and doing another.
That was the point I was trying to make.
Sorry, gotta get some water, folks.
It's been a long night, and I'm just, like, really bothered.
Now, what happened after that?
So after that relentless assault, you know, wake up to that nonsense.
Last night, I'm dealing with Twitter.
I mean, how many times have I promoted, you know, my account on Twitter and Twitter in general?
Endlessly, especially when I'm in for Mark Levin.
I find out last night that sometimes we run ads on Twitter for our show to promote the content of the show.
It's like Facebook ads and Twitter is part of our marketing budget.
I get an email last night, Joe.
Again, I didn't tell Joe any of this.
By the way, on a lighter note, that is some outfit you get on there.
Joe has like a v-neck, Elvis-looking, Fonzie t-shirt on, with his Elvis hair and his strings of hair hanging down the front of his face.
He, I'm telling you, you look like the gravy-sweating Elvis right now.
Well, thank you very much anyway.
Thank you, thank you.
Sorry, folks, I gotta lighten up.
I mean, I've had such a rough night.
But I find out this morning, Joe, That our account is now ineligible to run ads.
And it says for inappropriate content.
What is right?
Of course I didn't tell you because I, you know, I always prefer a genuine reaction on the show.
Folks, I looked through my entire account.
I don't know what they're talking about.
I genuinely have no idea.
I lost about 5,000 followers last night, so I'm going to ask you a favor.
If you could tweet at Jack, J-A-C-K.
He is the Twitter CEO.
And at Twitter Support, I would appreciate you asking them why, in fact, we're prevented from running ads.
And I'm going to ask you another favor.
And please, folks, I know this sounds very self-serving, but it's really just a response to this.
I've never asked you to do this before, outside of just mentioning the account.
But You know, please follow me, follow my account on Twitter, because if we can't advertise our content while the liberals out there can say whatever they want, they can accuse us of being accomplices to murder, the NRA people will be accomplices to murder, they can accuse us of all kinds of violent, disgusting things, and we can't get our content out there because we're in fact shadow banned and prevented from advertising our content, then it's over, folks.
We're going to lose the social media war.
So I'm asking you, please follow me.
Please, if you wouldn't mind, recommend the account to others.
It's the only way for us to over... I mean, I know it sounds self-serving.
I entirely understand that.
My apologies in advance.
But I don't typically make this a part of the show.
But I'm disappointed.
I don't know what else to do.
I can't fight that beast right now.
I'd like to see Twitter go the way of MySpace, personally, and I'd see another outlet that's fair and open, but right now there isn't one.
That's it.
And we have to fight on the platforms we have, and unfortunately that's the only platform we have.
Me, you know, cancelling my Twitter account is not going to do me any good, or you any good, or the conservative ecosystem any good.
You know, Dan, I think our listeners would be happy to help out.
I do.
No, they're great.
I get that feeling just from the correspondences.
I think they'd be glad to help out.
Yeah, you've seen the tweets and the emails even you get.
What are you, at Joe Haas with a Z1?
Yeah, yeah.
Follow Joe too, at Joe Haas 1.
No, I need your help, folks, on this.
I would really deeply appreciate it.
Let me just wrap this up by saying one last thing.
I got an email last night.
Or actually yesterday afternoon One of the more Horrifying emails I get a lot of email folks.
So typically what I do is I have to I read them I promise but I you know, sometimes I have to kind of scan through to Get to the point sometimes because there's just a lot of email that comes in But I got one yesterday that was just heartbreaking.
And I mean, I can't verify the authenticity of it, but it certainly sounded, by all accounts and by the detail in it, to be somewhat legitimate.
So I felt that passing it on would be appropriate to you all.
It was from someone in Coral Springs.
I'll leave out name, everything else, but obviously...
And it was an account by someone who was there at the scene in a response mode.
And the accounts of some of the kids running out with, you know, how do you say it?
Pieces of other body parts on them from other kids.
It's hard to read.
Folks, you know, you can't read that without being deeply impacted.
And that's why I say to you, I mean, why do you think we're doing this?
Do you think I read that?
And as a father myself, as a guy who dedicated his, I'm actually glad my camera's not working for Joe right now, but do you, you know, do you think that as a dad and as a guy who dedicated his, his life to really what I thought was doing the right thing, being a police officer and being a secret service agent, that that doesn't hit me right in the gut, that I didn't read that.
And I was sitting on a train and I didn't get choked up.
I'm trying to fix this too.
I'm doing my best.
I just want to do what works.
Because the irony is that the individual who sent me the email said at the end, was insinuating that the purpose of the email was that these kids had no way to defend themselves.
That these kids were just, there was nothing they could do.
And I'm just encouraging you to understand that I'm simply trying to give a fighting chance to people who aren't going to have a fighting chance otherwise to the evil among us.
I'm not doing this for any other reason.
I get paid by other folks for my opinion.
They don't pay me and tell me what to say.
Ever.
You understand what I'm telling you?
Ever.
Under any circumstances.
You tell me what to say.
This is a folks we have about, uh, we have the second biggest conservative podcast in the country.
You think I'd say this on my show if I didn't mean it?
Where I work and you know who I work for.
You tell me what to say.
I'm out.
I say what's in my head and I am genuinely trying to help here.
All right.
Um, having said that, You know, I brought this up in the past too, folks, with everything going on with Twitter and the silencing of conservative voices out there.
Folks, sadly, it may be time to seriously look at what a conservative economy would look like.
I mean, this is, I don't know how much longer this can continue where the mainstream media Folks out there like Media Matters and others, these groups that are anti-First Amendment, anti-free speech, that are active police state supporters, some of them, I don't know how long this continue.
And I want to just leave it at this, because this is, I had some notes to get to and I wanted to be sure you understood it, that at some point in the future, you know, we may have to go to a subscriber model here.
Because I don't know if you understand how nasty what's going on behind the scenes really is.
It's not just me, folks.
It is a number of... If any of you are interested in conservative podcasting or conservative commentary or liberty-based commentary or being a constitutionalist and having a public profile, let me just warn you right now.
As your profile grows, you will find yourself under relentless assault.
By people who are absolutely committed to silencing your voice.
And the more your voice is spread around on social media, through your podcasts and television appearances, the more they will try to silence you.
It's Pravda like, but it is very, very real.
The pressure is intense.
The pressure is sometimes it's a lot to deal with for me and others.
I spend about 20% of my time dealing with nonsense not related to content of the show but dealing to the police staters on the left who want to shut us up all the time.
So at some point I don't know if you know I'm trying desperately to keep this show free but I just want you to understand in the future it in the future it may not be possible.
Because the assault is endless.
They are trying to stop everyone and anyone who presents even a mildly alternative viewpoint from speaking out.
Okay, sorry folks about the long-winded beginning.
My apologies, but I just want to be honest with you about what's going on behind the scenes.
It will not stop.
All right, I got a lot more to get to today.
There's some fascinating data I saw.
A listener of the show sent me, I get a lot of great articles on email, but this one was fascinating.
It was an article about some of the more disingenuous talking points out there about gun control, which are not going to make us safer.
Keep in mind, Joseph, just to be clear, 30,000 feet, we are talking about things I absolutely believe in my heart, In my soul, with every fiber of my organic matter, that will make you safer, and I want to fight against things that will not.
There are some disingenuous talking points out there about gun control that I want to debunk, and one of them is the comparisons they make to make the U.S.
look like a violent country full of killers.
These comparisons are inaccurate.
So, hat tip to the viewer.
Hey, before I get to that, today's show Brought to you by our friends over at iTarget as well.
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Okay, so someone sent me an article from Mises.org, which is a really terrific website about the comparisons made between the US, Joe, and what they say is developed countries.
And the liberal talking point here is that uh you know hey folks listen uh you know the u.s is a violent country because when compared to other developed countries you see the u.s uh gun homicide rate is really high well as let me just quote to start this off let me quote the mises.org piece and it'll be in the show notes today appongino.com and
Let me humbly beg your forgiveness.
I forgot to put the Cato piece I talked about the other day in the show notes.
I hate when I do that.
It'll be in today's show notes.
The Cato piece, just to rewind a bit, is a piece about are the statistics on, quote, mass shootings accurate?
Are they really going up?
And it's a short piece, but you need to look at it because you need to understand the data before we can make legislative proposals, okay?
So the Cato piece will be in there today.
But I'll put this mises.org piece in there as well.
And here's a quote from there.
It says, nevertheless, we've heard it all too many times to count.
The gun laws in the United States are insane, quote, because countries like Sweden and Luxembourg have far more restrictive gun laws and are much safer because of it.
The U.S.
has the highest murder rate in the, quote, developed world, presumably because of its lax gun laws, we are told again and again and again.
Now, the author of this piece makes a terrific point, Joe.
He says, well, why are we comparing the United States to largely homogeneous societies like Japan, Sweden, and Luxembourg, when in reality... Joe, diversity, right?
It's all about diversity.
When you take into account the ethnic and cultural and racial diversity of the United States, a more appropriate comparison amongst the, quote, developed world would be Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, other countries.
But they're left out, Joe.
Now, why do you think countries like Mexico, Russia, and Venezuela would be left out in a comparison of gun homicide rates and, quote, gun deaths around the world?
Well, I'll give you the answer.
All right.
They're much higher in those countries, and of course it would make the U.S.
look relatively safe in comparison.
Now, folks, I know I encourage you often to read pieces I put in the show notes, and again, I understand that, you know, it's not It sometimes sounds a bit self-serving, but they're not my pieces, okay?
This is a Mises.org piece.
I don't benefit from it.
I just want you to read it because it's a really, really well done piece.
And what he shows in there, the author of the piece, He puts in there how they pre-select Joseph, they pre-select the, quote, developed countries, and they pick the ones that have these unusually low, quote, gun death rates, but the ones that have, I'm not, this is just typical liberal, you know, gobbledygook designed to confuse you into thinking that gun control is some method to make you safer when I'm making the case to you that it won't.
Interestingly enough, when you take out countries like Venezuela, countries like Mexico, countries like Argentina, countries like Russia, and you only include, and when I say homogeneous societies, I mean people who are largely culturally identical.
You have a Japanese society, you have the Swedes, Luxembourg, but when you put in more diverse societies that have different collections of people from different parts of the world, all of a sudden you see the statistical Mosaic looks different, Joe.
The United States, all of a sudden, doesn't look like, you know, the most violent country in the history of humankind, like some liberals are bent on painting it.
Now, why would that benefit their agenda?
Because they want to make you believe that we are so incredibly violent that we need to do something special to control firearms here, because if we control firearms here, it will reduce these incredibly violent tendencies that seemingly exist only in the United States.
Folks, this is garbage.
This is junk.
Now, I have another line from this piece, which is good.
See, when he talks about the Mises.org piece, they talk about a prejudice about the developed world versus the third world.
In other words, Joe, I thought, you know, liberals, their case was that, hey listen, everybody around the world, we're all God's children, we should all come here, these are all good people, and certainly I agree.
Not about the immigration component, but I absolutely believe people all over the world, regardless of the economic status of the world, are all created in God's likeness and image.
I agree on that 100%.
So why the prejudice?
Here's an interesting take from the piece.
He says, He says, note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries.
It's important, folks.
Most of which are very unlike the United States.
They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, and they are frequently very small countries, such as Norway, with a population of 5 million.
With very locally based democracies again unlike the u.s.
With an immense population and far fewer representatives and government per voter Politically historically and demographically the u.s.
Has little in common with Europe or Japan so folks what these but the author's trying to say here is if you're contrived say you're doing a A survey, Joe.
You're doing some kind of a statistical analysis on the effect of a new drug.
Yeah.
And you want to compare two groups.
You want to compare it to two groups that either the effects are randomized over the two groups, but you want to make sure they're two similar groups of people.
You don't want to, especially when it comes to sociological research and that kind of, which is having a replicability crisis, by the way, reproducibility crisis.
You want to compare groups that are similar because you may be getting effects that are different from the effects you intended based on the differences in the group, not in the differences in the treatment.
Let's compare apples to apples.
Apples to apples.
So in other words, yeah, exactly, Joe.
You may just be getting an effect from the drug that's due to different cultural differences or some kind of biological difference based on the homogeneity of the population rather than the effect of the drug.
I hope I'm not losing anybody.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, you're cool.
You want to compare basically similar societies here.
Do you notice how all of these studies that are done on this, they eliminate the more diverse populations and they take other factors out of the equation?
The reason they're doing this, folks, is to make us look a lot worse, to make us look like a really violent society.
More interesting about the data is when you compare the United States to places like Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, and Argentina, and other places, Joe.
What's fascinating is these places have more restrictive gun laws in many cases than the United States in general.
Remember, they vary by state.
They have more restrictive gun laws, and they are more violent.
They have more gun deaths.
So how exactly, I'm not sure how that makes your argument.
I'm not sure how that buttresses the left's argument that somehow more restrictive gun regulations and rules and laws are going to make it safer by comparing it to countries around the world.
When you compare it to countries around the world and you do a proper analysis and you don't eliminate the countries that don't make your argument, which is what they do, you find that the United States, even though in total has some less restrictive gun laws than some of these other countries.
They actually have lower gun death rates.
Folks, that is exactly the opposite of the argument the left wants you to believe.
You understand that?
It's the opposite.
The left's argument falls apart.
It collapses there.
Now, let me see.
Another part of the piece, which is really good.
I have a couple of them in there today, the show notes on firearms and gun laws that I think are really interesting.
Here's another one.
The way they measure gun deaths.
Folks, a large proportion of these gun deaths are not, in fact, gun homicides.
They are suicides.
Now, that doesn't make it any better for society, whether you kill yourself with a firearm or some other horrible way.
It doesn't make it any better, but it certainly skews the statistics show.
Making it appear that a society is more violent when you're using a statistic called gun deaths rather than gun homicides in many cases, takes into account that many of these people took their own lives.
Now, albeit horribly tragic, that is far different than someone shooting someone else.
It's just categorically different.
I think that's obvious.
It's tautological.
I'm not saying anything profound.
But if we're going to have an open conversation about gun violence, I think it's important that you segregate out what are gun suicides from gun crimes and gun homicides.
They are different.
And that's not what a lot of these statistics do.
So summing up...
If you read the piece, you'll find out, number one, that they eliminate a lot of the countries where, quote, gun deaths, even though the statistic is skewed, and I just discussed that, and I'll get to it again in a second.
But when you leave out countries where gun deaths are higher, of course you're going to get a number that shows the U.S.
is a super violent country, because you eliminated all the countries where the data shows that that's actually not the case.
It's not complicated, Joe.
This is very, you know, if you want to do a study on people who are, say, obese and you eliminate all the obese people from the room, then the guy who's relatively average weight is going to look like the heaviest guy in the room and the obese guy.
Do you get what I'm saying?
That's not how statistics works.
Sorry, really thirsty today.
The second thing, again, the gun deaths, the gun death statistic, it takes into account a lot of suicides, which again, however tragic they are, it's not the same as talking about a gun homicide.
Secondly, on this, or third I should say, in the piece, which is interesting, this is actually from a Wall Street Journal piece today, this statistic by, who is it, John Galston.
I can't put it in the show notes because it's subscriber only, but he makes a point I've made over and over again, and I think it's an important one.
Gosh, I'm trying to be so delicate with this topic because I just, I'm afraid, I really, really would like, I'm desperately trying to get Democrats and Liberals to listen here because I understand the emotions surrounding this, but I think it's an important topic.
If your premise, if your overall premise is that more guns equals more gun crime, more gun homicides in a more violent society, Joe, don't you think you'd be able to show that?
That more guns have, in fact... I mean, this is not... I'm not trying to set you up, Joe.
Don't you think, like, more guns would then, in fact, equal more crime, more gun crime, more gun homicides?
Yeah, I might think that, yeah.
It would be common sense.
Well, as we've seen, the United States is not, in fact, the most violent country amongst developed countries in the world, as we just debunked that.
But secondly, that's not the case, Joe.
From 1993 to 2013, this is an important statistic.
Remember this, folks.
From 1993 to 2013, gun ownership in the United States, the amount of guns, increased by 50%.
The number of guns increased by 50%.
From 93 to 2013.
So according to the liberals' theory, their credo, their bedrock principle, then gun crime and gun homicides should have exploded.
Yeah.
They didn't, Joe.
Gun homicides dropped by 50%.
Listen to what I just told you.
The number of guns has gone up by 50% from 93 to 2013.
The number of gun homicides has gone down by 50%.
Down.
Your premise is not an accurate one.
Your premise is simply not true.
Your premise is entirely inaccurate.
Now, I'm also going to include in the show notes an article, and I just tweeted it out, if you'd be kind enough again to follow me on Twitter and spread the word, an article Kerry Pickett had tweeted out from last year, from March, but it's an Australian news article, Joe, about the surge in gun violence in Australia.
Now, again, Australia.
They instituted a gun confiscation program where you had to turn in your gun and the government would buy that gun back from you.
It was mandatory.
Folks, I already told you about the research between Australia and New Zealand where they found no discernible decrease in mass shooting incidents after the gun ban.
I also told you about the American Medical Association study in Australia that showed there was no statistically relevant decline in gun homicides after the gun ban.
I'm gonna put an article in there from March of last year which shows that there's actually been a surge in many portions in Australia in crimes using firearms.
So what I don't understand again is we've now debunked the idea, number one, that the U.S.
is the most violent country amongst the developed world.
Your question to your liberal friends is, well, why are you eliminating the countries in the, quote, developed world that have a higher gun homicide rate than the U.S.?
Why are you doing that?
Because when you include them, we're actually not even close to the top.
Secondly, well, guns, more guns means more crime.
Actually, that's not accurate.
More guns actually in the United States has meant less gun homicides.
That's just the data.
The data doesn't lie, and the data, as Ben Shapiro says, the facts don't care about your feelings.
Finally, if your point is, well, Australia did a gun confiscation, gun ban, and look what happened there.
Yeah, look what happened.
Gun ownership.
There's more guns in Australia now, by the way, than there were before the ban.
Secondly, the research shown it had no discernible effect on either guns, homicides, or mass shootings.
By the way, it's the American Medical Association for one of those studies.
Not a right-leaning outlet.
And third, large portions of Australia, especially population centers, have seen surges in gun crime and gun violence.
So your point, this is why I'm trying to tell you folks, and why I'm so passionate about this, and why I believe in what I'm doing.
I'm simply trying to tell you what liberals are proposing has nothing to do with making you safer and has everything to do with an agenda.
The agenda has always been to stop the individual ownership of firearms and the ability to defend yourself.
And what's really incredible about it, Joe, is that... One more thing on this.
I didn't want to spend... I have a number of things I want to get to, but...
The left does this a lot.
They will make opposing arguments about things.
And in making those opposing arguments, they'll miss their own hypocrisy.
You know, an example I've given in the past often is public schools and health care.
How the liberals, when you follow the money, why they make contradictory arguments makes sense.
Liberals will say, you'll hear them often when it comes to public education, Joe, we're not spending enough money on the kids.
We're not spending enough money on the kids.
Yet when it comes to healthcare, by the way, even despite government spending, our healthcare system is still the best in the world, and our education system is one of the worst, they'll say, we're spending too much money.
We're spending too much money on healthcare.
Wait, what is it?
In one case, public education, the system is failing.
The system is failing.
We rank towards the bottom of all the OECD countries in our education results and the results we produce on aptitude tests.
Excuse me, achievement tests.
We rank that there's a big difference on achievement tests.
We rank towards the bottom.
Yet, you're still insisting that the money obviously is not working.
Yet, we are spending money in our healthcare system.
Believe me, I'm not saying we don't have significant problems in our healthcare system.
I've done entire shows on that.
I'm simply saying where there's still a significant private market, free market component to it, it's actually working and you're saying we're spending too much.
It doesn't make sense.
Now, why?
Why do they make two different arguments?
In one case, we're spending too little.
In one case, we're spending too much, despite the fact that the results are completely different.
They make two different arguments because the public education system, the money that goes into the public education system through taxpayers, finds its way into basically what's become, in some cases, a jobs program for people who vote Democrat.
You've seen a bloat in administration where taxpayer dollars go in the education system.
And you've also seen a lot of money wind up in the hands of teachers unions that, just by the percentages, overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
So the money, you need to keep the money flowing to keep the teachers' unions happy.
I'm not blaming teachers.
Don't email me that.
Teachers are great.
I'm talking about the organized interests that don't represent, I think, what teachers really stand for, in my opinion.
But do you see how that money eventually benefits Democrats?
Well, what happens in the healthcare system?
The money, the end result of that money, is not, in fact, teachers' unions.
It's typically hospitals, doctors, nurses, and, you know, it's probably 50-50.
Half of them are probably Democrats, half of them are Republicans.
In short, it does not exclusively benefit the Democrat Party, so the argument is always, we spend too much, we spend too much, we spend too much, because it doesn't benefit them.
But Democrats never see the irony there.
Because they don't want to see the irony, I should say liberals.
But you see the same thing, Joe, when it comes to the firearm issue.
They will make an argument about abortion, right?
And when you turn the argument on them about firearms, they simply have nothing to say.
They'll say something like, well, you know, on abortion week, you know, if we were to make abortion, uh, you know, illegal, say even after 20 weeks, then women are just going to go in the back alley and, and, and do, um, and, and, you know, have an abort, an illegal abortion, which would be dangerous.
So the premise of what you're saying, just to be clear, and this is what liberals are saying, I am saying laws matter.
I just want to be clear on this.
The liberals say laws don't matter, right Joe?
In other words, you pass a law on abortion, and of course what's going to happen is women are just going to circumvent the law and have an abortion anyway, and it's going to put them in danger, so therefore why pass the law?
So Joe, I'm not crazy, right?
Laws don't matter.
Right.
But yet when it comes to firearms, despite the evidence that the laws do not work, the laws, the assault weapons ban, the Department of Justice's own sponsored study, the assault weapons ban did not work.
The Australian gun ban, as I've told you now for two shows now, did not work.
Evidence mounting that increased gun ownership does not lead to increased crime rates, despite the fact that there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that your statements and your premise about reduced gun ownership increasing your personal safety are irrelevant.
You're asking for more laws despite the fact on abortion that you're making the argument that laws don't work.
Laws do work.
And by the way, we don't have unfettered access to guns.
We have a background check system.
We have a NICS system.
We have a prevention device from dangerous felons buying weapons.
It's illegal currently to do straw purchases.
In other words, Joe, I can't buy a gun for you and give it to you.
I can't do that.
This is all illegal.
So don't tell me we have unfettered access to guns.
The conservative point is laws do work.
We have reasonable laws in place and regulations in place to prevent criminals and people who are going to prey on us from accessing dangerous weapons.
We already have those.
But what you want is you want more laws.
Just to be clear, Joe, to sum this up, liberals are arguing for more laws that we've produced evidence will do nothing because the evidence is already there.
Despite the fact that on abortion, you're making the opposite case that laws don't do anything at all.
This is, do you understand like why, again, why I wake up every morning frustrated about, I love my country.
I'm a patriot.
This is the greatest place on earth.
And I'm happy to be alive at this time.
I thank God every day for the gifts and opportunities he's put in front of me.
But it is frustrating being a conservative because when you turn that to liberals and you ask them that question they stutter and stammer because they have nothing to say.
Because folks, to them it's not about reason and it's about strictly emotion.
They play on people's emotions to enact an agenda and that agenda is the diminution, the decreasing of individual liberty at the expense of individual liberty and benefiting entrenched state power interests.
That's always what this has been about.
It's been that from the start.
And when you point out the hypocrisy of it, they either ignore it or they just move on to the next argument.
But that's another argument to bring up to your friends.
Well, then if, you know, if laws are going to stop gun violence, then, you know, what's your argument about abortion?
Do you think, you know, we could reduce the abortion rate in the country if we, say, made abortion illegal after 20 weeks?
No, no, we can't do that.
Women will get abortions anyway.
Well, you just said that gun laws will stop gun violence.
Meanwhile, there's no evidence of that.
It's nonsense.
They make different arguments all the time, which is just, it's very upsetting.
All right.
What else?
I got so much.
Okay.
A couple more things here.
All right.
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All right.
One final note on this John Carlson piece.
I was just talking about the Wall Street Journal.
He's the one who put that statistic out about gun ownership going up and gun homicide rates going down and crime rates, too.
He has a couple solutions and I just wanted to hit on these because I think they're really good ones, too, and I want to move on.
But, you know, number one, folks, remember the The United States is a free country, and freedom does have a price.
You want absolute security?
Then you can have a police state.
That's not what we do, and the way we handle The, let's say, complications, because there are some that come along with liberty, Joe.
Liberty means there are going to be some people among us who, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I don't mean liberty is a pejorative, I just mean that a free society, there are going to be people in a free society who take advantage of that.
There are going to be people who at some point buy weapons, knives, guns, bombs, whatever it may be, and will use them to hurt, injure, or kill others.
Now, the way to stop that altogether is to live in a police state.
No one can buy ammonium nitrate.
No one can buy any kind of fuel.
No one can buy knives, scissors, anything else.
You're certainly not allowed to buy a firearm, ammunition, or anything like that.
Now, that would be, in effect, a police state.
It's also known as a jail.
And by the way, interestingly enough, weapons still make it into jails where people get shanked and stabbed every day.
So even police state tactics don't necessarily work in actual de jure police states, okay?
The way we handle liberty in a free society is we allow people the freedom to, you know, as long as you don't impact on the freedom of others, to do things.
But we enact penalties if you abuse those freedoms.
This is the problem I've always had in the gun control debate show.
And I always hate the term because you're not going to control guns as we've seen in Australia.
You're only going to control people.
I said in a speech five years ago.
Folks, when you go... Here's the best way to describe this.
You know the old fire in a movie theater line?
Well, you have the right to free speech, but you can't yell fire in a movie theater, which is actually not... Look that up.
It's not exactly true the way that's always phrased, but for the sake of simplicity, that's one of the examples used.
You all have free speech, but you can't yell fire in a movie theater.
Actually, you can.
It's the penalty afterwards that matters.
And why do I say that?
Because nobody stops you, Joe, going into a movie theater and asks you to fill out a survey about what you're gonna yell out in a movie theater, and nobody stops you walking into a movie theater based on your, say, conservative beliefs or anything like that, and says, well, you're a conservative who may scream fire at a movie theater to test this out, so we're gonna keep you out of the movie.
In other words, it's not proactive.
There's not a proactive prescription of liberty.
Oh, excuse me, restriction of liberty.
Forgive me.
There's not a proactive restriction on liberty.
I actually have a prescription.
Folks, I'm dead serious.
I'm looking at my prescription right now.
Talk about a Freudian slip.
It's sitting right there.
There's not a proactive restriction of liberty there.
There is a penalty if it's abused.
If you do get up and, again, firing a movie theater is not exactly a great legal example, but it's the one people know, and for the sake of an analogy, just roll with me for a minute.
If you were to scream something like, you know, I'm gonna shoot this movie theater up, there's a good chance you're gonna be arrested.
Although, you know, you did have free speech.
You went in there, you had the right to free speech, you abused it, you said something, or you threatened someone in the movie theater, and then you're arrested.
In other words, Joe, In a free society we focus on penalties for bad behavior, not restricting behavior in advance.
That's the issue I have with the Second Amendment.
We focus so much on supply-side measures and restricting these freedoms in advance that we sometimes forget that the real incentive to stop criminals and the evil among us is in the penalty phase.
We have to make real penalties because we've seen the restrictions don't work.
I've already told you about restrictions on gun laws, how they haven't worked in the United States, how the assault weapons ban didn't work.
I've already told you this.
How the Australian gun ban didn't work.
So Carlson says there's a couple things we can do.
Why don't, number one, we focus on the penalties?
Penalties for gun crime, penalties for gun theft.
Joe, you have a firearm, legally or illegally?
You got something going on there?
You look distracted.
Oh, yeah.
Come on, it's part of the show.
I got somebody coming out, going out the door right now, and I was just talking to him, seeing what was going on.
Joe's like having a side conversation.
What the hell's going on here?
Hey, listen, this is great.
You know, this isn't a live show, but you and I treat it like that.
Oh, yeah.
Because we leave this stuff, Joe can easily edit this out, but I just think it's funny.
Sometimes we got to have, I love the effect of a live show that's not live.
Did you ask me a question?
Yeah, I saw you, I'm like, what's he doing back there?
You know what it reminded me of?
If you ever watch Old School, one of my, oh no, excuse me, Wedding Crashers, Wedding Crashers, confusing movies here.
At the end of Wedding Crashers, right?
They go to meet Will Ferrell, who's like the grand poobah of wedding crashes, and he starts crashing funerals at the end.
You see the movie?
They meet him in the house and he realizes what a degenerate he is, and he comes down in his bathrobe after crashing a funeral and meeting a woman at a funeral, and he's sitting on his couch.
He lives with his mom.
And he's like, what is she doing in there?
Talking about his mom.
Mom, the meatloaf!
Make my friend some meatloaf!
What are you doing?
What is she doing in there, Wilfred?
That's what I'm like, what is he, what is Joe doing?
What is he doing in there?
Joe, the meatloaf!
Sorry, folks, I get distracted.
All right, getting back to this.
So we have to focus on the penalties.
Focus on penalties for gun crime and for gun theft.
You steal a gun, folks, you steal a gun, make it 10 years.
Do 10 years.
Why not?
You steal a gun.
You steal a gun and commit a crime with it?
I mean, let's focus on the penalty.
20, 25 years?
I'm open.
I mean, I'm not, again, interested in police state tactics, but I'm interested in hearing an honest conversation about what the disincentive would be for people to stop doing that.
Straw purchases?
You buy a gun, you give it to someone who's prohibited from owning a gun, or even constructively prohibited from owning a gun?
There should be a penalty for it.
So those are sensible solutions that would, you know, potentially work.
But again, the left is interested simply in supply-side measures, which is really, really disappointing.
All right, what else are we going to get to today?
I got a couple stories here.
Let's see.
All right, let me try to squeeze one more in here.
So, Andy McCarthy has a really good piece up at National Review.
It's a little bit lengthy.
But give it a shot.
I read through the whole thing this morning.
It's an excellent piece.
And it's about the confusion that I see rampant amongst liberal commentators, Joe, when it comes to the powers of the presidency.
Oh, oh, yeah.
But you know what I'm talking about?
The powers of the presidency only when it comes to Trump.
Like, remember, when Obama was the president, And Obama enacted DACA with a pen and a phone, which was an unquestioned usurpation of legislative powers by the executive branch.
Liberal commentators had no problem with it, despite the fact, as McCarthy points out in his piece, by the way, rather eloquently, that Obama himself said he couldn't do it.
Yeah, I see what you're mouthing there.
That's an FCC ban word, Joseph.
You can't say that.
Joe turns his mic down and starts, Kurt, did you know that, folks?
He does.
He starts cursing.
He turns his mic off.
Obama himself said he couldn't do DACA.
I can't just do it, you know?
And then he went and did it.
And a lot of liberal media outlets had no problem with that at all.
But now all of a sudden they have a renewed focus on the powers of the presidency and liberals want President Trump arrested, charged, indicted, I mean brought out in handcuffs for even the execution of his own powers.
Under the executive branch, which are defined by the executive branch.
So McCarthy has a really good piece, a little lengthy in National Review, but he points out that these arguments for criminally charging Trump are ridiculous.
Let me just quote quickly one part from the piece, and I want to show you what the real sanction on the president is, because folks, you can't indict or charge the president for executing his own powers.
You can't.
You could try, good luck with it, but it's not going to work.
There's a way to take care of that, but it's not the criminal process.
Here's a quote from the McCarthy piece.
He says, it would be better if the president hewed to that norm in custom.
It would have been better if Trump had not pled on Mike Flynn's behalf to FBI Director James Comey, just as if it would have been better if Obama had not publicly announced in April of 2016 that he did not believe Mrs. Clinton should be indicted.
But the fact that it would be preferable for a president to refrain from signaling how he wants an investigation to turn out does not mean such signaling is tantamount to a criminal obstruction felony.
The authority that FBI agents and prosecutors exercise when they weigh in on the merits of an investigation or prosecution is the president's power.
There is no power that the president's subordinates may exercise that he may not, regardless of norms and customs.
Folks, All executive powers are vested in the president.
Meaning, the Department of Justice works in the executive branch and under the president.
If this is making any of you uncomfortable, by the way, I promise there is a check and a balance here.
I'm not suggesting in any way that the president is a king or a monarch.
I'm simply suggesting to you that all executive powers are vested in the president, not the Department of Justice.
The Department of Justice gets its power and derives its power from the President of the United States and the Office of the Presidency.
So does the FBI that works for the Department of Justice.
If the president had taken Comey in and demanded that he fire Jim Comey, and demanded that he shut down, down the mic, uh, uh, taken Comey in and, Jim Comey demanded he fire himself.
If he had taken Comey into his office and fired Jim Comey, and then demanded that the Flynn investigation shut down.
Let me, Joe, let me just be crystal clear what I'm saying.
That's not advisable.
It's not recommended.
I'm not saying it's ethical or moral.
Right.
I'm simply saying, and I believe McCarthy's a skilled lawyer, that that is perfectly within his purview to do it.
Right.
There is no criminality or obstruction there.
It is not going to work.
You are not going to indict the president for executing his own powers.
You may not agree with it.
Now, you may say, well, gosh, what's to stop a president from just unilaterally becoming a tyrant and a man king?
Well, folks, we already have a process.
The process is called impeachment.
I don't know if this is a newsflash to the left.
Now, that's not saying we're... I'm talking about the execution of legitimate presidential powers.
In other words, if the president were to, you know, on a presidential trip, pull out a shank and stick it in someone's kneecap and attack someone, obviously that is not the legitimate execution of presidential powers, folks.
I mean, I'm using a ridiculous example, but it's tough talking to the left because they don't seem to understand it.
But the president has the ultimate prosecutorial discretion.
In other words, prosecutors that work for the Department of Justice, investigators that work for the FBI, their powers, as McCarthy says in that quote I just gave you, rewind it if you need to hear it again, are derived exclusively from the president.
It is under his office.
So you can't claim that if the president says, hey, we don't want to investigate that.
We're going to investigate this.
We don't want to do that.
We're going to drop this.
We're going to look into that.
The power you have to do that is derived exclusively from the president.
Do you understand that?
It may not be advisable.
I'm simply suggesting to you that it is not, it's not even remotely criminal.
The process to get rid of the president is impeachment.
He could be impeached in the House of Representatives, he would then go to trial in the Senate presided over... Right, that's the first step, the impeachment.
Yeah, his first step to impeachment is obviously basically the charges in the House, and then the trial in the Senate presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
That's the way it works.
Bill Clinton was impeached, he was not convicted, so to say, in the trial in the Senate.
But folks, that's the check and balance.
The check and balance is you can get rid of the president via impeachment.
It is not indictment or criminal charges for the legal execution of his powers, however politically unadvisable.
Please read the piece.
It's important you understand that because the left doesn't... they're so involved in the Trump derangement syndrome stuff, Joe, that they seem to be lost in all this and it's really upsetting.
All right, folks.
Thanks for bearing with me today.
I'm sorry in the beginning of the show to spend some time on that, but there really is a lot going on behind the scenes and I really need you now.
My audience, please, if you wouldn't mind helping us out, we'd really appreciate it.
So thank you so much.
Please check us out at Bongino.com and please check out the show notes today.
Always available at the website and on my email list if you join.
Thanks so much.
See you soon.
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