In this episode I address the troubling misinformation campaign being waged in the aftermath of the Dayton and El Paso attacks.
News Picks:No, the United States doesn’t lead the world in mass shootings.
The relationship between guns and the homicide rate isn’t what liberals think.
Even Politi”fact” can’t hide the truth about firearms in the US.
Taking 8 Chan offline will prevent law enforcement from finding clues.
Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
It's unbelievable, folks.
Absolutely hard to believe, unfathomable what's going on right now.
We are in the midst of a cloudy fog of misinformation fed to us in a current stream by liberals and their media bootlicking buddies that will just never stop.
You know, we had this unbelievable tragedy, series of tragedies this weekend, and the misinformation campaign and the attacks just never, ever end.
Welcome to the Dan Bongino Show under these really horrible circumstances, he says.
This is going to be an important show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
You know, I'm with you there, pal.
I mean, geez, this is... It's just incredible.
Insane!
I cannot believe... I tweeted out yesterday, if you turned on cable news yesterday expecting to find clarity and truth, then, man, were you disappointed.
This is real.
That people just suck up this endless stream of garbage, never critically thinking for themselves if any of it is true, is truly incredible.
Alright, I've got a stacked show for you today.
A couple of announcements before we start.
I will be co-hosting The Five on Fox News at 5 o'clock on Thursday and Friday.
Please tune in.
I deeply appreciate it that you have made the shows I'm on very successful.
You want to see more of me out there, then tuning in is the way to do it.
If you don't, of course, then no.
But I really appreciate it.
My audience, you guys and ladies, are super loyal.
And I will be guest hosting Hannity on Friday night after The Five at 9 p.m., of course, on Fox.
Please set your DVRs and tune in live if you can.
It means the world to me.
You have made us number one in the demo and overall each time, so it means a lot.
Okay, here's where we're gonna go today.
First...
We're going to do a thorough debunking where you're going to get facts today of the misinformation campaign.
The U.S.
is some uniquely violent place.
We lead the world in mass shootings.
All this stuff you've heard, not true.
Not, not, no, they are not facts.
This is the anti-fact alarm.
We have had a bunch of people out there screaming, do something.
Okay.
Yeah.
Let's do something.
It's just not what you think.
All right, let's get right to it.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at Tommy John.
Hey, listen, there's a lot of underwear brands out there that claim to be big on comfort, but if that were true, why are 75% of men and women dissatisfied with their underwear?
We love Tommy John in this house.
I was a big Tommy John supporter even before they became a sponsor of the show.
My joy is stacked with Tommy John's.
My hunch is that they haven't tried Tommy John, the revolutionary underwear brand that's upgraded over 1 million lives.
Tommy John just doesn't claim to be the most comfortable underwear on the planet.
They have the stats to back it up.
How about this number?
Over 7 million.
That's the number of pairs Tommy John underwear has sold, with 96% of their customers rating them with four stars or greater.
You can't beat that.
Tommy John's revolutionary underwear, the legs never ride up and the waistbands never roll down.
They're super comfortable.
Got them on now, as a matter of fact.
Their horizontal quick-draw fly has been proven to save men over 217 unfurling minutes a year, and their feather-light air fabric guarantees zero visible panty lines for women.
Can't beat that.
Tommy John's much more than underwear.
We've got 750 products online, such as super soft loungewear, polo shirts, and apparel.
You're so sure you're gonna love it.
They give the best pair you'll ever wear.
It's free guarantee.
That means if you don't love your first pair, you'll get a full refund.
Tommy John, no adjustment needed.
Believe me, we love Tommy John in this house.
Hurry to TommyJohn.com slash DanNow to get 20% off your first order.
TommyJohn.com slash DanNow, get 20% off your first order.
TommyJohn.com slash DanNow, 20% off your first order.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are really, really great underwear.
We love them here.
All right.
Moving on.
OK.
Yes.
Let's get cracking here.
So Hillary Clinton started the misinformation campaign yesterday with an absurd, outrageous tweet.
Again, it is, of course, the liberal manifesto to crap all over the United States at every opportunity.
So in Hillary's tweet, she wants to make, of course, the United States appear like this uniquely violent place.
There's no comparison to it anywhere else on Earth.
Hillary tweeted.
People suffer from mental illness in every other country on earth.
People play video games in virtually every other country on earth.
The difference is the guns.
What Hillary Clinton, of course, the worst candidate in the history of presidential elections, and from my experience, an absolutely despicable, horrible human being, what Hillary Clinton failed to point out at the end of that tweet is gun violence exists everywhere else on earth also.
The difference is the guns.
In other words, Joe, Hillary Clinton's tweet is so stupid, the fact that I have to entertain it here is disturbing.
But other people have picked up on this theme.
This is the new liberal talking point.
Hillary Clinton has not had... Let me be clear on this.
Sadly and regretfully, I have experience with Hillary Clinton up close and personal.
Hillary Clinton has not had a unique thought regarding politics in her entire life.
Everything is a focus group tested talking point designed to get Hillary Clinton into power or with access to power.
Hillary Clinton has not had a unique political thought in her entire life.
Somebody told her to say this, some focus group.
How do we know that?
Because the talking point was immediately parroted by others in the Democrat Party, the media, and the anti-Trump brigade out there.
Video games exist everywhere, so it's not the video games.
Mental illness exists in other countries, but we have this unique violence problem here.
The difference is the guns.
Okay, let's get into the debunking.
PJ Media has an excellent piece up, which will be in the show notes.
Highly recommended.
Always available at Bongino.com.
It's attached to the podcast.
If you subscribe to my email list on the website, I will send you these articles.
Please do it.
This is a great piece by Matt Margolis, August 4th, 2019.
PJ Media, no!
No!
The United States does not lead the world in mass shootings.
Folks, this is a hysterical, left-wing, media-driven, media activist, far-left, radical liberal talking point to make the United States seem like some war zone.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I said yesterday on the show, this is a problem.
It does us no good to repeat the strategy of the Democrats and misinformed people in the United States.
30 people died this weekend.
This is a severe problem.
But painting this problem to be unique to the United States, we're the world leader in mass shootings.
Is a disingenuous lie designed not to get you to truth and clarity, but to get you to hate Donald Trump so that Democrats can take political power.
Understand the difference between those two things.
We will not on this show continue misinformation.
No, no, it's no problem, folks.
Don't worry.
Mass shootings, gun violence, not an issue.
It is an issue!
You know how many people in Chicago lost their lives this week?
We lost 30 people due to two maniacs in Dayton and El Paso.
Of course it's a problem!
But you using your Twitter account as Hillary Clinton, who is, I'm telling you, has never had a unique political thought in her life, to make the case that it's the guns in the United States, it's uniquely violent here, against all known facts and data, is designed to do one thing, to misinform you, to take away your civil liberties and your constitutional right to defend yourself.
It's not meant to solve any problem that we acknowledge on this show exists.
Right.
No question.
Got it.
Yeah.
You had a guy claiming that he walked into a Walmart to kill Mexicans.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a problem, and a darn serious one.
But you misinforming people is not helping.
Now, that was the headline to the piece.
Now, Matt Palumbo at our site, Bongino.com, has another piece as well, which works in tandem with this.
Under Debunk This on our website, that's the section, Matt's also the title of Matt's upcoming book, Debunk This, where he covers this in depth, by the way.
Matt Palumbo, the relationship between guns and murder isn't what liberals think.
There are a couple of takeaways from this.
I want to address the PJ Media piece first.
Ladies and gentlemen, liberals have now been parroting this talking point repeatedly, knowing it's a lie, that the United States leads the world in mass shootings.
Folks, that is not accurate.
It is based on one study that has been widely discredited by people who have done research in this field.
It is a study done by a man named Lankford, a PhD.
Or maybe he was a PhD student.
But this guy Lankford's research, which pointed out the fact that the United States, the fact, I'm using air quotes, leads the world in mass shootings, has been parroted by anyone who can get their hands on it.
Joe, what's the problem with this study?
Hmm.
It's not true.
I didn't think so.
Of course you didn't think so, because you probably heard that with an air of skepticism saying, something's wrong here, there's an agenda.
The agenda, of course, is to take away your right to protect yourself.
So they want to make the United States appear uniquely violent.
What's wrong with the study?
In that PJ Media piece is a really good Jon Stossel video.
It's about three minutes.
You can watch it in the PJ Media piece.
I can't put it up on this show.
You know, you run into copyrights.
I don't want to get into that.
But you can feel free to check it out.
It's in the PJ Media piece.
But it's well done by Stossel.
And there's a piece by Jon Lott who's done some research on guns and crime.
And he points out the flaws in this study, and the flaws are so unbelievably obvious that you wonder how media people who take their job seriously parroted this without being skeptical.
Number one, the guy Lankford that claims the U.S.
leads the world in mass shootings claims remarkably, Joe, to have studied mass shootings from 1966 on from something upwards of 170 countries and has amassed the entire data set of mass shootings.
Huh?
That's your best response yet, huh?
Yeah, that's incredible.
I'll say.
So Lott and John Stossel reached out to Lankford, of course being a bit skeptical, and said, wow, that's incredible.
How did you get past the language barriers?
Were you able to read in the native language, the newspapers, all the way back to 1966?
And to be fair, both John Lott and Stossel reached out to Lankford and said, we would, you know, like to see your data set.
Which, by the way, Joe, any, any self-respecting researcher, folks, I'm telling you, right or left, whatever your political leanings are, if you're afraid to share your data, you're probably lying.
Lankford won't share his data set.
Well, now.
Well now he's right!
So he translated newspapers from what?
Hundreds of different languages all around the world from 1966 back to gather a data set about mass shootings to come to the conclusion that the United States leads the world in mass shootings and the media parrots this without any type of skepticism at all?
Of course there's an agenda.
Keep this in your headline, top bullet point in your head as you're hearing all of this.
The agenda is not to prove the U.S.
leads the world in mass shootings.
It does not.
The agenda is to paint the United States as uniquely violent because of what?
Because of the Second Amendment.
To engage, then, in a subsequent political attack on your big R, God-given right to defend yourself and defang the Second Amendment.
There it is.
That's the real goal.
The real goal here is not truth and clarity and data.
So, you may say to yourself, well, what happens when you actually do the research and you expose them?
Well, Lott took a look at it.
Lott took a look at the data and came up with some interesting conclusions.
When he started researching mass shootings around the world by the liberals own category of what a mass shooting is, not related to terrorism, those are separate categories.
Four or more people.
Four or more.
Four or more folks.
Okay.
What he came down with, Joe, is that the US actually ranks 62nd.
What?
Wow.
Not number one.
Yeah.
Now folks, Joe, big difference, right?
Yeah.
1.67.
1.62.
Huge difference.
Dude.
I want to be clear on this because again, this is not a misinformation show like the nightly news and cable news channels.
That is not to discount the problem.
The families of 30 plus people are now mourning because their kids, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers, their mothers, their friends are gone.
And we're going to get into what we should do and to do something later.
Because this is a whining show.
This is a fix-it show.
But I am not going to let the liberals advance a silly, debunked, nonsense talking point on an opaque data set the researcher himself won't share to advance a talking point that is false.
U.S.
is number one.
We're uniquely violent.
It's the guns.
It's our Second Amendment.
Even Hillary said it.
It is not true.
It is false.
Now what about the Beto O'Rourke talking point?
Now Beto, Beto's struggling.
Beto, as Tucker Carlson calls him, former superstar of the liberal democratic movement, now polling at 0% in polls.
Beto, who is a congressman from that area in El Paso, running for president, sees his floundering campaign, and again, instead of providing truth, clarity, and moral leadership in a time of unquestioned crisis, Beto has done what?
He's taken the Hillary Clinton approach and decided to advance a political agenda to try to get out of his 0% cellar to make himself a liberal superstar again in the political campaign, and he has decided to lie as well.
I don't know if you remember the debates, but Beto threw out a ridiculous, outrageous talking point that the United States leads the world in gun deaths.
And we have more gun deaths in the United States than any other country.
That was Beto's talking point at a debate.
A talking point I'm hearing parodied again.
In addition to talking point number one, we lead the world in mass shootings.
We don't.
We're 62nd.
Folks, I have no other way to debunk that other than to tell you then, they just made it up.
The guy will not even expose his data set.
And when you go and actually look at the newspapers and the studies and the mass shootings overseas, the United States is 62nd.
It is not true.
You're just making it up.
But secondly, do we lead the world in gun deaths?
We're number one?
Folks, I can't believe where I'm using PolitiFact here, which is a garbage left-wing activist site.
But even PolitiFact in this article, even PolitiFact has debunked this.
Here's a PolitiFact story from August 2nd, 2019 by Madeline Mechelberg.
Are there more gun deaths in the United States than any other country?
And to be clear, this was PolitiFact, Texas.
They were challenging Beto's assertion.
U.S.
more gun deaths than anywhere in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, again, absolutely categorically not true.
Number one, from the article, the majority of the gun deaths, not that they're any less tragic, folks, but certainly the circumstances and the public danger are different when they're suicides.
Of those deaths from the PolitiFact piece, the gun deaths in the United States, all tragic, folks.
60% were recorded as suicides.
36.6% were homicides, according to the CDC.
These aren't right-wing numbers.
It's the CDC.
The other 3.4% were marked as unintentional, undetermined, or the result of legal interventions or war.
So folks, to be clear, when you categorize that number of gun deaths, I'm not diminishing the tragedy of losing someone to suicide, homicide, they're gone.
But how they're gone dictates the response to it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the suicide danger and the homicide are completely different problems.
Problems nonetheless.
Serious ones.
Especially when it comes to our military PTSD, the opioid crisis, and people who feel like there's no way out.
But Joe, there is unquestionably a different fix to the suicide problem than a gun homicide problem.
They are different issues.
Now, I had to set that up to move on to takeaway two from a PolitiFact piece nonetheless.
When you're being debunked by a left-wing activist site like PolitiFact, and you're a leftist, you know you made it up.
The second takeaway from the article.
So Joe, looking at this chart, YouTube.com slash Bongino, I'll explain it to you for our audio listeners, don't you worry.
They have a quick table here.
So Bateau's, his data point he put out there is US leads the world in gun deaths.
Not true from the PolitiFact piece and I quote, take a look at the number of firearm injuries and deaths in each of these countries in 2016 according to this study in order of the total number of deaths.
Brazil.
Deaths per 100,000 people, that's 19.4.
Mexico, 11.8.
Colombia, 25.9.
Venezuela, 38.7.
I'll tell you, 19.4.
Mexico, 11.8.
Colombia, 25.9.
Venezuela, 38.7.
Guatemala, 32.3.
Well, so you figure the highest number we have on that chart, Joe, is Venezuela at 38.7 gun deaths
per 100,000 people.
So if Beto is right, the United States' number is clearly higher than Venezuela at 38.7.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're just talking about a matter of facts here.
Again, we're not in the liberal realm, we're in the fact realm now.
So in the fact realm, what we do in this show, because we're not going to continue a misinformation campaign, if Beto O'Rourke and the liberals are right and the U.S.
leads the world in gun deaths, then clearly we should at a minimum be higher than the people on this table you see here.
Yes.
We should be higher than 38.7.
What's the United States' number?
0.6.
Now I know liberals have a difficult time with facts and data.
Put that up again, I just want to read this last part.
Wow.
Folks, making that talking point even more ridiculous.
So you have these homicide rates and gun deaths per 100,000 dramatically higher than the United States.
Here, the study revealed that in Brazil, most firearm deaths were homicides.
In the United States, slightly less than 40% of these deaths were homicides.
The majority were suicides.
Even worse, So even though the gun death rate in the United States, an issue, no doubt, we'll get to that.
Even though it is a problem and a troubling one, it is nowhere close to being the world leader in gun deaths and making your solutions even worse.
Most of those gun deaths in these other countries are people being killed by others.
Most of them here are suicides.
Different solutions for different problems.
They don't want to solve problems.
What they want to do is misinform you.
Headline, the United States is uniquely violent due to the Second Amendment.
Oh, conveniently, number two, let's get rid of the Second Amendment.
No, let's not.
You know, one more piece of misinformation I just want to put out there.
Don't worry, Paul, it's not in the... Ladies and gentlemen, there is no gun show loophole for Joe, what is this, the 1,152nd time?
Yeah, Daniel.
Maybe Judy, audience archivist, can count.
I'm just kidding, Jude, don't do it, because we've mentioned so many times it'd be a waste of everybody's time.
There is no gun show loophole.
This is a made-up fantasy of the left.
There is no gun show loophole.
If you go to a gun show and buy a firearm from a licensed dealer, which, by the way, are the overwhelming majority of people at gun shows, if you've ever been to one, and we've been to many, you will be background checked.
You bet.
Now, private to private sales There, it's not, some do, but it's not mandatory.
In other words, if a farmer transfers his firearm over to his son or his neighbor, he's getting old, gives him his shotgun, he doesn't have to background check his neighbor.
Ladies and gentlemen, If you buy a firearm at a gun show from an FFL with a federal firearms license, which is the majority of people, I assure you, you will be background checked.
There is no gun show loophole.
This is made up.
Again, I don't have, there's no scientific debunking here.
Like, here's their calculations.
Here's our calculations.
You can see the calculations don't marry up.
We use the quadratic formula to find the two.
They're just making it up.
Just like they made up, the U.S.
leads the world in gun deaths.
It's just not true.
And the U.S.
leads the world in mass shootings.
It's just not true either.
There is no gun show loophole.
You want to get yourself in real trouble?
Go to a gun show and ask about the loophole.
The FFL guy will call the cop over.
Be like, I don't know what this guy, he doesn't want to be background checked.
There's no gun show loophole.
I don't know what to tell you.
You know when I opened up the show, I'm sitting on Hannity, let me give you a little behind the scenes.
I'm sitting here in my office, you know I just changed the background to do Fox, right?
And I'm waiting to go on Hannity last night, and he plays this cut of these media people, this montage of the endless lies!
Trump did it.
Gun show loophole.
We need background checks.
We have background checks.
We're so violent here.
It was just like you sit there and you get just you fume from your ears because you wonder these people are they even mildly concerned about their credibility and the answer ladies and gentlemen is no they're not.
They're not.
They don't care at all.
Their credibility is meaningless.
They don't have any.
They are bathed in gaslighting and lies.
And you know why they don't care about their credibility?
Because honestly, you know why?
I'm going to give you the candid truth here.
Because they know they will never be checked by other media people because journalism is dead.
Journalism is dead.
We had this thing with the New York Times today.
They had to change the headline in their paper.
They reported honestly on what Trump said.
They had to change the headline because their viewers complained they weren't mad enough against Trump.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's not journalism.
It's dead.
It's over.
Do you understand?
It's over.
If you tuned in, I will leave this off, where we came in.
If you tuned into the news yesterday, expecting clarity, you were sorely, sorely disappointed.
You tune in here, I promise you the truth, when we can get to it, and to clear the clouds.
Alright, I want to move on, but I just, again, want to reiterate, ladies and gentlemen, this is not meant to diminish the suffering and the tragedy that happened this weekend.
These are real problems.
But we as conservatives, libertarians, and republicans have a responsibility to seek out the truth.
And when we find the truth, we can hopefully find a way not to zero out human suffering.
There's no way to do that.
But to maybe mitigate it.
You know, when we were in the Secret Service and our job was not to make the President 100% safe.
You may be shocked by that statement.
But I'm telling you the truth.
Because there's no way to do that.
There are sick people all over the world willing to trade their lives for others.
Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta be honest with you, there was almost no way to stop that.
Our job in the Secret Service was to create such a secure environment that we would knock out a lot of these incidents, and if God forbid something did happen, our response saved the President and his family in time.
It was to think of every possible thing we could think of, but not to be able to think of every possible thing someone else can think of, because you can't do that.
We're not fortune tellers.
Our job here is to get to the facts.
What happened?
Did something break down?
If it broke down, what was it?
How do we stop it from breaking down again?
It's not to misinform you about how the United States is some uniquely toxic, awful place.
So you can take away others' rights.
Alright, I want to move on to the do something crowd.
We'll get to that in a second.
Do something.
Listen, whenever the government does something, ladies and gentlemen, hide your wallets, hide your rights, hide your liberties, hide your kids, hide everything.
All right.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at Policy Genius.
Policy Genius.
Ladies and gentlemen, these days, a lot of workplaces offer some pretty nice perks.
A snack station, 15 flavors of soda water, even insurance!
But while it's nice to have a handful of trail mix and some water, that tastes faintly of pampa moose, that's not enough to subsist on.
If you're quick, you can do it even under two minutes.
It's so fast.
PolicyGenius.com, PolicyGenius.com.
It's the easy way to shop for life insurance online.
It ain't gonna get any easier.
And in this case, ain't is a word.
In minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers to find the right amount of coverage at the best possible price.
Why are you over, folks, why are you searching this all online?
Let me go to these 20 different companies.
Go to policygenius.com, knock it out right there.
The Policy Genius team can look at your workplace life insurance policy and help you decide what else you might need and what you don't.
And Policy Genius doesn't make just life insurance easy.
No, no, no.
They do more.
They can also help you find the right home insurance, auto insurance, and disability insurance too.
So remember, workplace life insurance policies are like workplace snacks.
Better than nothing, but not quite enough.
Head to policygenius.com today and find out how to supplement your workplace life insurance and better protect your family.
Policygenius.com.
It's like a buffet!
Whereas my mother-in-law calls it a bouffet, made of life insurance.
And what could be more delicious than that?
Policygenius.com.
Go check it out, policygenius.com.
All right, moving on.
So the Do Something crowd.
Yeah, here we go.
Okay, folks, I agree.
So let me just, they had a rally yesterday.
You know, first let me put up this tweet from Kacey Musgraves, who I'd never heard of.
Apparently he's a country singer.
But Kacey Musgraves was at a concert and she was screaming, you know, With the F word.
Blank and do something.
You know, so she puts up this tweet, which is just unbelievable because if you're going to do something, first know what you're talking about doing and know what the something is.
Here's her tweet.
Let me be clear.
I'm from Texas.
I grew up around hunting and guns.
There's a time and a place for that and even self-protection in ways, but this is different.
The system is majorly flawed and nobody needs anything remotely automatic, period.
They're mass killing machine.
You know, we had a listener send us a gavel.
Ladies and gentlemen, order in the public space.
Listen, Casey, I don't know you.
You're probably a wonderful person.
Really, I'm not trying to be silly with you or sly.
I don't know who you are.
I've never heard of you.
You seem very famous.
You have a big following.
You don't know what you're talking about.
And I'm sorry, I don't know a ton about country music.
I like it.
I listen to a lot of it.
I'm a big Brad Paisley fan.
But I don't know the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the scene.
I haven't been to Nashville.
I haven't been to these country music centers.
So I just refrain.
I mess it up most of the time, this culture stuff, because I try to refrain from talking about stuff I don't know about.
I don't know it.
Casey, screaming at your concert about doing something.
These guys involved in this, these shooters, these killers, they did not have automatic weapons.
Automatic weapons are prohibited without a tax stamp.
I'm sorry you didn't know that.
But you have a responsibility as a public figure with a large public following.
Again, to not continue, let's go back to where we started.
The gross, disgusting misinformation campaign by liberal Democrats, their media people, and the anti-Trump brigade.
You are not helping.
Proposing on your Twitter account to ban automatic weapons or suggesting it when they are currently illegal without a tax stamp and a body cavity search-like background check is completely unethical, immoral, and frankly just plain dumb.
You don't know what you're talking about.
So when people scream at our concert, she's like, effin' do something!
Okay, about what?
A problem you don't even understand?
Do something about what?
The world, we're the leader in mass shootings?
We're not.
Gun violence is a unique problem here?
It isn't.
The gun show loophole?
There isn't one.
About automatic weapons?
Currently illegal without a tax stamp.
Those were not automatic weapons.
Now, here's the crowd in an event with Ohio governor.
Mike DeWine, not all of them, but some people in the end, screaming, do something!
Check this out!
Do something!
You know what?
You do something.
Get off your ass and you do something.
You know what you do?
Get your kids off the screens 24 hours a day.
Sitting there on a screen totally devoid of social interaction.
Oh, you don't like it?
Ah, don't lecture me.
I'm not lecturing anybody.
I fail too.
I'm a sinner like everybody else.
But you want to do something?
You want to fix our cultural problem?
We don't have a gun.
We've had guns here forever.
I talked about it on yesterday's show.
Something changed.
You got a kid staring at an iPad for 20 out of 24 hours a day.
Completely devoid of any eye contact with a human being.
You want to do something?
Separate your kid from the damn screen for two minutes.
You know what?
I'm not the perfect parent by any stretch.
But I try to make a point every day of even asking my seven-year-old daughter what she did in camp and having her explain it to me.
Oh, nothing.
That's what she... No, no.
You didn't do nothing.
You did something.
You want to do something?
Teach your kids some empathy.
Go point out the homeless guy in the street and how awful it must be for him to be sitting there.
Let them feel others' pain.
You know, my mother wasn't perfect, but when I was younger, she made me watch this unbelievably violent movie about the race riots.
I'll tell you what, I was not ready.
But I never ever forgot that scene.
I'm not kidding you.
It was a movie.
Of a group of black men and women being pulled off a bus and having their shit beat out of them.
I never forgot that!
You want to teach these kids some empathy?
Point out the suffering of others.
So that they don't view these people as characters in a video game.
And I'm not blaming video games, folks.
People have had video games forever, too.
But sitting your kid in front of a screen for 20 hours a freaking day, and you expect these kids to grow up normal?
You think?
Be a father to your kids.
Show up.
Be a mother to your kids.
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't like it either sometimes.
Being a parent isn't easy.
You want me to give you some Pollyanna?
Oh, it's great, all the time.
You know what?
I love my kids to death.
I would die for them in a heartbeat and so would Joe.
But anybody who bullshits you and tells you 24 hours a day it's peaches and cream is full of crap.
Kids are tough.
They don't understand yes and no till they're five and six.
Teenagers think they know everything when they know nothing.
I didn't know a darn thing when I was 13.
You think you know everything, though.
Oh yeah.
They want to engage in dangerous behavior.
Oh, my friend's parents let them drink.
Good.
Screw your friend's parents.
I'm not raising your friend's kids.
Be a parent to your kid.
Pull him off the darn screen.
Be a father to your boys.
Your boys, these young men, be proud of who they are.
I ain't got to crap on them all the time.
Young boys are the problem.
Maybe they're the problem because we tell them they're the problem.
Roughhouse with your kids once in a while.
Grab your kids, throw them up in the air once in a while.
Yeah.
Wrestle with your kids.
I play the trappy game with my daughter all the time.
She has to get out from my jujitsu guard.
Parents did that all the time.
Joe, you did it with little Joe.
You always roughhouse with your kids.
You know what?
They learn the limits.
They learn that not all physicality is meant to be bad and awful.
Right.
Teach them to socialize with human beings.
To talk and have a conversation, man.
Big point, dude.
Teach them to look their... Teach them to treat people who are older than them with respect.
You know, when I was in the police academy, this is a true story.
I had... Folks, listen, it's not a sob story of my childhood.
Please don't take it that way.
But there was very little discipline in my household.
I went to the police academy very early in the cadet program at about 18, 19 years old.
And I'll never forget, I had no sense of public manners at all.
And I'm crapping on myself here to put this story and it matters.
This young lady was giving out forms in the police academy.
She passes me, I go, I whistle at her.
Now Little Joe's better mannered than I am, but he's in boot camp now.
I guarantee you he's not whistling at the drill sergeant.
Ladies and gentlemen, the sergeant that was running that class humiliated me in front of a hundred people, and it was the greatest damn thing that ever happened in my life.
I never, ever did that again.
Oh, but you may hurt their feelings.
Tough shit!
Maybe their feelings need to be hurt, because maybe their feelings are wrong.
I feel like I should be able to whistle at a lady.
No, you don't do that.
You don't talk to me.
You're not a dog.
Hey, you!
You don't whistle at people.
Are you a savage?
The answer is, I was.
And I regretted every minute of that.
It was humiliating.
Remember the sergeant, hey you, stand up.
Oh, yeah.
You see what this guy just, oh boy, was it horrifying.
I hear you, bro.
It was the greatest damn lesson I ever learned.
You see your elders, you treat them with some dignity.
Oh, they're not perfect, they made the same mistakes you have.
The point is, they've already been there.
They've seen it.
What do you think?
Your life is so uniquely fantastic that some 80-year-old senior who's lived a lifetime of stories hasn't seen the same crap you've been through?
Are you that stupid?
What do you think?
At 16, you know everything?
Oh, gosh.
You know what?
These old people, they don't know anything.
Oh, yeah?
Really?
Oh.
Sit down for two minutes and listen to some of their stories of living through the Great Depression when starvation was a real threat.
Our biggest problem now is we're obese.
We're dying of obesity.
These people were dying because they had no food.
Maybe take five minutes and listen to their stories.
Treat them with respect.
Take your kids to church.
I don't speak with forked tongue there.
We do everything in our power to get there every Sunday.
We rarely, if ever, miss.
Bring them to church, man.
You want to do something?
Do something!
Teach them it's not about them.
That there's a big capital G God with God-given rights.
You have no faith?
That's up to fine, whatever.
You're welcome here, too.
We don't discriminate against people, but at minimum, act like there's a God.
I can quote the Jordan Peterson.
Jordan Peterson, he says, listen, he doesn't preach about God, but he acts like there is one.
I believe.
Jesus Christ is my savior!
May not be yours!
I'm not your preacher!
But gosh, act like there's one!
Teach your kids!
It ain't about you, man!
Do something!
Yeah, do something!
Be a parent to your kids!
Be a surrogate parent to that kid in your neighborhood who doesn't have another parent!
Be a father figure!
I grew up in a divorce household.
So did my wife.
Ladies and gentlemen, it sucks.
Me too, dude.
Really bad.
It's not good, Joe.
Hell no.
No, it's not.
Men and women are different.
Don't buy this liberal claptrap nonsense.
There are different lessons you learn from your dad.
You need your dad.
Be a father, man.
And listen, people get divorced.
I'm not here to judge you and your relationship.
People separate for all kinds of reasons.
It doesn't mean you have to stop being a dad!
Right.
You want to solve the problems?
Do something!
You're darn right!
Be a father!
Teach these kids empathy!
Get the kids off the damn screens!
Take them to a church once in a while!
Teach them it ain't about them!
Respect your elders!
Speak with some dignity!
You don't have to go out looking like a savage all the time!
Whistling, screaming at people, treating people like dirt.
Tell them to give to charity.
Donate some money.
Take some of their minimum wage, $7.25 salary and make them give it to someone.
Show them it ain't about them.
My daughter cried when we gave away her Dora house when she was a kid.
I'm not kidding.
But I wanted her to teach her a lesson around Christmas.
You may think it's cruel.
I don't care.
We bought her some new toys, but I wanted to make sure she knew that some of her old toys had to go, so we gave it to this gentleman who came to my house for work, who didn't have any toys for his kids.
We had him pull up a truck.
My daughter cried for a day over that.
You think it's cruel?
Too bad, it taught her a valuable lesson she still brings up today.
We've been blessed by God with material abundance in this household.
I refuse to let my daughter fall prey to that, even at an early age.
I'm not interested in anybody's opinion about if they liked it or not.
It taught her a valuable lesson.
That other people need stuff too.
And your material abundance, you have the opportunity to help.
It is not about adding an extra iPad all the time.
And yes, I'm a capitalist.
But morality matters too.
Do something, Casey Musgraves.
Crack a book once in a while.
Tell people to teach their kids.
Be better people.
Alright, what I want to get to next is what not to do.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a fan of these red flag laws at all.
And I want to get to a piece next.
I want you to be very, very careful about where we're going with these things.
Listen, I support the president and when he advances the conservative cause.
I'm telling you this is a bad idea.
Stay tuned, we'll get to that in a second.
All right.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at NetSuite.
Listen, if you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business.
But the problem growing businesses have that keeps them from knowing their numbers is their hodgepodge of business systems.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me just be clear on this, right?
If you have a business and you're integrating 16 different software systems, you're wasting a lot of time.
Just go to NetSuite.
They're great.
They take care of everything.
It's really terrific.
We like NetSuite.
These businesses, they have a system for accounting, sales, inventory.
It's an inefficient mess.
It takes up a bunch of time, a bunch of resources.
It's not worth it.
It hurts your bottom line.
Introducing NetSuite by Oracle, the business management software that handles every aspect of your business in an easy to use cloud platform, giving you the visibility and control you need to grow your business.
Grow, grow, grow.
NetSuite, NetSuite, NetSuite.
With NetSuite, you'll save time, money, and a lot of unneeded hassles and headaches by managing sales, finance, and accounting orders in HR instantly.
Get a load of this from your phone desktop right there.
It's so simple to use.
It's why NetSuite is the world's number one cloud business system and the preferred business system of the Bongino Incorporated Enterprise.
And right now, NetSuite is offering you its valuable insights with this cool free guide, Seven Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits, if you go to netsuite.com slash Bongino.
That's netsuite.com slash Bongino to download your free guide, Seven Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits.
It's a really cool guide.
You get a lot of good insight in there.
Netsuite.com slash Bongino.
Netsuite.com slash Bongino.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's as simple as this.
Thousands of the best known brands and fastest growing businesses are using NetSuite.
Netsuite.com slash Bongino.
Go check it out today.
Okay.
Okay, with regards to do something, let's not do this.
What are these red flag laws, excuse me, that are being proposed?
It was brought up yesterday in President Trump's speech from, I believe it was in the diplomatic reception room at the White House.
They are restraining orders issued in advance to take away firearms from people other people think may be dangerous.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, again, I am all about solutions to this problem.
But ladies and gentlemen, I am always, always going to be about the preservation of liberty and individual rights first.
The potential for abuse here is stunning.
Now, in a piece in the Federalist by Dana Lash, which will be in the show notes, and I strongly encourage you to read, she writes, why red flag laws are not a good solution to mass shootings.
Now, disclosure, I worked with Dana when I used to work at NRA TV.
Dana used to work at NRA.
I don't think she's there anymore.
Doesn't take away from the issue she brings up in the piece, and I want to bring up a couple now.
Why red flag laws could be big trouble.
Number one, This is not in the piece, but I'm going to put this out there myself as my primary concern.
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in an environment now where the President of the United States, as a candidate and a president, was spied on precisely because of rumor and innuendo.
That's not open for dispute.
You may say, I don't get the connection.
Oh, you will.
We have a Fourth Amendment right against illegal search and seizure of our property, our records, our phone calls.
There is a right to privacy in that Fourth Amendment, although not written out as such.
The government has to prove probable cause that a crime was committed and dictate out a warrant to a judge before they can spy on you, take your property, get a search warrant.
Folks, in a free society, that's what we do.
It's to prevent the intrusion of government into our lives for political reasons, not criminal ones.
Or for even worse reasons.
Confiscation of our property.
You can't do that without due process.
The problem with these red flag laws, the same problem we had with the Patriot Act, which I've been speaking out against for now, what, eight years?
Nine years since I've been running for office?
Is it flips the presumption of innocence on its head.
The same way liberals have flipped the presumption of Donald Trump and his team's innocence on their head.
Oh, if Donald Trump had nothing to hide, why does he mind being spied on?
That's not the way it works, knuckleheads!
You're innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until you can prove your innocence.
That's the marker of a police state.
And a tyrannical empire.
We don't do that here.
You have to provide a data set of facts to provide probable cause to get a warrant.
Are those probable cause metrics going to be met in these red flag laws?
With the gun confiscation now, is this going to be- are people going to be- are- fair question here, folks.
Are liberal activists who are legion on social media?
Gonna be trolling social media accounts of conservatives and Republicans and pro-Trump people out there.
Are they gonna be reporting people for red flag laws?
Because they don't like a Facebook or a Twitter post?
Oh, Dan, that's out of line.
Is it?
Are you sure?
I would have told you three years ago that a liberal plot to spy on the President of the United States is a candidate.
I would have laughed you out of here.
I'm not kidding.
Oh, come on.
Nobody's gonna do that.
Except it happened.
You sacrifice, to quote our founding fathers, liberty for security, you'll have neither.
Red flag law, so I, what if someone goes on Twitter and doesn't like it?
Now ladies and gentlemen, there are, it is already illegal to threaten the life of other people.
You go on Twitter and threaten the life of the president, that's illegal!
There are aggravated harassment, harassment charges for threats.
You can't call someone on the phone and threaten them.
You threaten someone's life.
The police are going to investigate.
In that case, a search warrant and a confiscation of a firearm may be perfectly appropriate within the bounds of our Constitution.
We already have restraining orders.
We already have civil commitments.
We already have probable cause warrants in the event of a crime, right?
Folks, these are serious questions.
What are the protections against people out there who just don't like people of the opposite political... And folks, listen, it could... To be fair, it could happen with conservatives too.
What if a conservative out there... I'm not suggesting they do this, but I want to give you both sides.
What if a conservative doesn't like a liberal on Twitter?
Hey, I heard a report this guy may have a gun.
I think he's threatening me.
I want to report him under red flag.
It could happen either way.
This is a bad idea.
Second, folks, as Dana points out in her piece, folks, what makes you think under red flag laws, these signs are going to be caught now?
The signs of the, the, the Dayton, the, the, the attacker in Dayton, apparently the signs were everywhere.
He wrote, you know, he had this outrageous, these postings, apparently he was, according to some of the evidence, was a Satanist, and the signs were all over!
These signs were missed!
The Parkland shooter, Cruz, the signs were everywhere!
Entirely missed!
Maybe a public education campaign on what we should be looking for, rather than a public constitution campaign to overthrow the constitution?
These signs, what makes you think they're gonna catch these signs now?
You're trusting the government to do this?
Ladies and gentlemen, again, when we say do something, the do something starts in your house.
Why are we yelling at Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, like he did this?
What about you?
The yellers do something.
You do something!
Start in your own household, I already told you!
Raise your kids!
Get them off the screens!
Start paying attention to the warning signs in your own community.
Let's fix Nick's.
What's NICS?
The National Instant Check System.
When you go in to buy a firearm at a gun show or anywhere else from an FFL, you have to do a background check in the NICS system.
As we saw in the Sutherland Springs incident.
If the NICS system that shoots red flags do not sell a firearm to this man or woman, doesn't have the information, there's no red flag to put up.
Sutherland Springs, the attacker there, the information was missed.
The Air Force didn't update it appropriately.
Can we start there?
You want to do something?
How about we do that and fix the Nick system we have now?
So the background check system we have now at gun shows and elsewhere actually works.
Folks, we already have civil commitments.
Maybe we need to start looking at our mental health laws.
Deinstitutionalization.
I'm not suggesting everybody should be committed, but it's clear the standard danger to self or others.
Maybe we're missing some signs out there.
But folks, this urge to do something always winds up infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens whose firearms have never killed anybody.
Folks, there are tens of millions of people in this country that own firearms legally and responsibly, who hunt with them, who go to the range with them, and who keep them for the mental peace of mind of their own safety and security, themselves and their families, who have never committed a crime in their entire lives.
You want to hear a stunning number?
Concealed carry weapons permits holders, ladies and gentlemen, have lower crime rates than police officers.
Wow.
Yeah, I said that right.
Police, and they have some of the lowest crime rates obviously imaginable.
The law enforcement officers, concealed carry weapons permit holders have lower crime rates than them.
Why are we the problem?
I'm not forfeiting my civil liberties.
They are not open for debate.
Let me give you one, one last, Do something, because we should do something.
Wrote this in a tweet yesterday, along these same lines.
Ladies and gentlemen, protect yourself at all times.
Do not rely on the government.
Those heroic, unbelievably heroic, police officers in Dayton, many of whom had less than three years on the job, by the way, who ran directly into the line of fire.
No cover, nothing.
Even they took 30 seconds.
Which, by the way, is an extraordinary response time.
Folks, protect yourself.
Yourself.
At all times.
Your safety is not the job of police officers.
Oh, damn sure it is.
No, it's not.
The job of police officers is to enforce the law in the community.
They are not your private security force.
You doubt me?
If you were to call the police department tonight and ask for a police officer in front of your house because you feel unsafe all night, you're not gonna get one.
However, if you report a crime, you will get the response from a police officer.
Protect yourself at all times.
All right, I want to end with this absurd, outrageous tweet from this just bonehead at the Daily Beast, because again, here we go with the blame-the-do-something crowd.
You know what the do they want in the something is?
The do-something is lie to the American public to take away their civil liberties, to diminish their Fourth Amendment rights and their Second Amendment rights.
That's the do-something by the left.
Here's this knucklehead, Justin Miller, who works for this conspiracy theorist blog site The Daily Beast, a bunch of unbelievably discredited, silly lies.
If you're reading the Daily Beast for facts, please seek professional help right away.
I have direct, I'm not even going to go into it, direct evidence of these people lying to you in a piece on something I have... They just make stuff up.
Here's Miller's tweet at the Daily Beast.
So this guy who's, I don't know, the editor or whatever at the conspiracy theory Daily Beast tweets out, CNN recklessly speculates the Dayton shooter may have been politically motivated.
The shooter's tweets or politics have zero relevancy so far because he killed indiscriminately.
Oh my gosh, here we go.
This is the same clown whose outlet, The Daily Beast, has promoted Russian conspiracy theories.
Who is this guy, Miller, who is endlessly trying to impugn the integrity of the President of the United States and attach him to mass shooting incidents.
This same guy.
The same guy.
You know why he's upset?
You know why he tweeted this out?
He's upset because the attacker in Dayton was a left-winger who apparently supported Elizabeth Warren.
And he's upset because his narrative that all of these shootings are President Trump's fault is now falling apart because this guy was a left-winger.
That's why he's upset.
That's why his delicate sensibilities are offended.
He's a clown.
The guy's a joker.
Again, his do-something is to lie to you.
It's not Elizabeth Warren's fault.
It's not.
I'm not gonna fall into that trap.
It's not AOC's fault that some maniac shot up the Antifa terrorist tried to shoot the place and blow a place up after using AOC's language.
It's not, folks.
We go down that path, it's over.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world every year hear political speech.
Tens of millions of those own firearms.
And you know what happens?
Nothing happens.
They go out and vote.
A infinitesimally small subset of people, from right-leaning and left-leaning ideologies they prescribe to, wind up engaging in ultra-violent acts.
Clearly, it's not the politics.
There's something else going on.
But Miller doesn't want you to know that.
Because he wants to do something.
And what he wants to do is make sure your civil liberties evaporate under the guise of a foggy misinformation campaign.
All right, folks.
I gotta run.
I'm gonna leave that there.
It's been an emotional show today.
I'm a little drained, I'm gonna be honest with you, but this is a conversation that had to happen.
