Sept. 6, 2022 - Epoch Times
12:11
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| This right here is Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. | |
| And during World War II, Admiral Yamamoto was the commander-in-chief of the entire Imperial Japanese Navy. | |
| However, prior to World War II, he actually lived in America, he traveled extensively throughout the States, and he even studied for two years over at Harvard University. | |
| And during the very height of the war, when the Japanese were actually considering a land invasion of America, well, Admiral Yamamoto was famously quoted as saying this... | |
| You cannot invade mainland United States. | |
| There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass. | |
| Now, there's some debate about whether this quote really came from Admiral Yamamoto, but regardless, that sentiment has been shared among all of America's adversaries since the U.S. came into being as a country. | |
| In fact, according to a survey that was conducted in 2020, American civilians possess about 393 million guns. | |
| That is, we quite literally have more guns than we have people. | |
| And again, that statistic was from the year 2020. | |
| And since then, as you can see with this graph up on your screen, gun sales have gone parabolic. | |
| And so you can probably add several tens of millions to that number. | |
| Furthermore, in terms of the actual number of people, according to a 2021 National Firearms Survey that was conducted by Georgetown University, 32% of American adults say that they personally own a firearm. | |
| That means when you actually do the math, that's more than 81 million Americans that own guns. | |
| And then of course, if you include the family members who live in the same household as a gun owner, that number jumps all the way up to 41% of all Americans. | |
| Meaning that from a certain perspective, America has quite literally the largest reserve civilian army in the entire world. | |
| Now, the overarching legal protection for Americans to own guns comes from the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution found within the Bill of Rights, which reads this, Now, of course, that sounds very simple. | |
| The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. | |
| Seems like a simple and straightforward proposition. | |
| However, as you likely know, there are currently strong forces in this country pushing towards restricting gun ownership. | |
| At the federal level, we recently saw Joe Biden giving a midterm election campaign speech wherein he said that if Democrats pick up two seats in the Senate and retain control of the House, they will move to ban assault weapons. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| If we elect two more senators, we keep the House Democrats. | |
| We're going to get a lot of unfinished business. | |
| We're going to get done. | |
| Folks, look. | |
| We'll codify Roe v. | |
| Wade. | |
| We'll ban assault weapons. | |
| Then, going from the national stage down to the individual states, you have a similar situation playing out at the micro level as well. | |
| Because on the one hand, you have about 24 states which have declared themselves to be constitutional carry states, meaning that these states recognize the absolute right of their citizens to carry guns as per the Second Amendment. | |
| However, on the flip side, you have politicians as well as political candidates who are pushing to slowly ban the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms. | |
| And as a prominent example of that, in the state of New York, starting this month, starting in September, applicants for gun licenses must hand over several years' worth of their social media posts so that a government bureaucrat can determine whether this particular individual has good moral character. | |
| I'm sure that will never be misused. | |
| And so, in order to understand what's really happening behind the scenes in this whole gun debate, I sat down with Mr. | |
| Wes Verdell, the Texas director of an organization called Gun Owners of America, which describes itself as being the only no compromise gun lobby in the country. | |
| And if their name sounds a bit familiar to you, that might be because they were the organization behind the recent Supreme Court decision which actually struck down the state of New York's restriction on concealed carry permits. | |
| And during our discussion, Wes not only explained to me the, you can say, philosophical importance of gun ownership to a free republic, but also the more practical, hands-on, boots-on-the-ground ways that he's working to maintain this right for you, me, and future generations. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| In order to properly set the stage for the audience, can you give them an idea of what a GOA is? | |
| What is Gun Owners of America? | |
| We are the no compromise gun lobby organization in the United States. | |
| We're the second largest gun organization right now. | |
| And our main priority is actually passing legislation that promotes Second Amendment. | |
| You know, when we look at the Second Amendment, that's actually written as a restriction on government, not a restriction on citizens. | |
| So we're trying to make sure that government cannot infringe on our rights. | |
| So maybe before we dive into some of the specifics of what you are working on on the ground and the organization as a whole, can you talk maybe from an even philosophical level, what is the importance of gun rights? | |
| Why are you working so hard to preserve gun rights here in America? | |
| Without citizens owning guns, government is a tyrant. | |
| Government will always grow and will always want to restrict the rights of the citizen. | |
| And if you look at all the other countries throughout the COVID process, the countries that had already taken the guns from their citizens had no problem putting excessive restrictions. | |
| Now, we had excessive restrictions here, too, that we need to fight and stand up against. | |
| But we didn't have them as excessive as a lot of the countries. | |
| So you look at Australia. | |
| They were putting people in quarantine camp. | |
| It's insane, but they gave up their guns. | |
| You know, that's just the beginning of it. | |
| You look back at Mao and Stalin and Hitler. | |
| And don't forget, Stalin and Hitler were on Time magazine, Man of the Year, back in the day. | |
| Those guys took away the guns. | |
| They starved their people. | |
| They incarcerated or imprisoned lots of people and killed them. | |
| So we're talking over 15 million citizens were killed after the guns were removed from the citizens. | |
| For the viewers who might not be aware of what it is, what is constitutional carrying? | |
| So constitutional carry means that it recognizes that you already have the right to carry and you don't have to ask the government for permission to do that. | |
| If you have to ask the government for permission to participate in a right, it's not a right, it's a privilege at that point. | |
| Unfortunately, well, I shouldn't say that, but I live in the state of New York at the moment. | |
| And New York had very wild provisions in terms of who is allowed to carry a firearm or not. | |
| I remember even before this Supreme Court case came through, I was looking at the provisions of whether you can get a concealed carry permit, and it was really elitist. | |
| It was like, if you're a famous person, if you have a special case, you have to basically prove that you are an elite member of society and then you can carry a gun. | |
| And of course, that was overturned. | |
| From my understanding, gun owners of America is actually fighting to have that ruling actually apply to the other states that have these restrictions. | |
| And I believe we were involved in the Bruin case. | |
| I believe we played a role in that. | |
| And now GOA is suing New York because once that happened... | |
| New York's now gone and tried to place different restrictions on buildings and who can carry. | |
| And so GOA's involved in that fight of suing the state of New York right now over it. | |
| So we're pretty excited to... | |
| I wish we didn't have to do this. | |
| I wish they would just recognize that we have the right to carry. | |
| But we're excited that we are in the fight for it. | |
| And that's something that's when you ask about what does GOA do. | |
| We want to make sure that all citizens' rights are protected and primarily the Second Amendment. | |
| The perception is that Texas is a very kind of pro-gun state. | |
| But a few years ago, Beto O'Rourke, he lost the election by just a few percentage points, right? | |
| And he was kind of openly campaigning. | |
| I mean, he flip-flopped back on the issue, but he kind of flipped more towards the gun-grabber sort of rhetoric. | |
| And yet he lost by a few percentage points. | |
| Now he's in the polls, actually doing fairly well after what happened in Uvalde. | |
| What do you make of that trend? | |
| Like, of course, you're fighting back at the legal level, What do you make of this sort of popular trend? | |
| It could be argued that we're losing the battle among the moderates, the suburban Republicans, because a lot of suburban folks don't have an AR-15. | |
| But those folks, you know, never been around firearms. | |
| They're still Republican in some sense. | |
| But we have to get that message out to those people. | |
| Hey, when you don't have a firearm or you don't have the ability to own the firearm, Your government, this nice, comfortable life we have right now, our government will make that end pretty quickly after that. | |
| So we have to make sure that we get all Republicans to understand it and even reach across. | |
| We're starting to see some far-left people that are understanding the concept. | |
| You know, after COVID happened, I think that woke a lot of people up on, like, hey, government is not necessarily there to be our friend. | |
| Yeah. | |
| You know, we look at how many people are moving away from blue states into red states now, and I think that was kind of a wake-up call where people saw the difference in the types of government that they have. | |
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| Also, the gun ownership rate just skyrocketed after COVID and, of course, the 20 riots. | |
| Actually, across the board, red states and blue states, the gun ownership rate skyrocketed, especially first-time gun purchasers. | |
| Besides the constitutional carry provisions that you're trying to implement at the different states, what else is GOA working on? | |
| If you're accused of using it the wrong way, that you have a better defense, you can defend yourself better in court. | |
| Now, our legal team could explain that a whole lot better than I can. | |
| I'm not a lawyer, but But anyways, that bill, once it gets finalized, I'll go through, learn the details of it, and then we'll present it to some legislators and hopefully they'll carry it into the House and see what happens. | |
| One thing that we've had over the years is we have really good bills that we put forward and the legislators love to campaign that they're pro-gun. | |
| Behind the scenes, there's legislators who aren't really pro-gun and they will work to actively kill our bills in committees and in calendars. | |
| So our goal is to make sure that we put pressure on them to get it through the committee, through the calendars, and onto the floor for a vote. | |
| And then it's got to repeat all that again in the next House and the Senate, so... | |
| So essentially, the organization, you have a legal team who drafts bills, makes sure they're bulletproof against the state and the U.S. Constitution, finds supportive legislators who are currently in power to pass them through, and then everybody has to vote on them. | |
| And I guess that sort of exposes the people who are legitimately pro-2A. Yeah, and my personal motto is I'm willing to work with any legislator on pro-Second Amendment legislation. | |
| If they don't want to work with us, that's their choice, but we will make sure their constituents know that they weren't willing to keep their campaign promises to their voters. | |
| Holding legislators accountable, that's the key. | |
| Now that was now the full interview. | |
| If you'd like to watch that interview in its glorious entirety, you can do so over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform, where, actually, besides the entirety of this interview, I actually published somewhere between two to three exclusive episodes of Facts Matter that, due to the regime of censorship here on YouTube, you will just not be finding on this platform. | |
| And so if you want to check out the entirety of this interview, as well as that other awesome content, The link will be right there at the very top of the description box. | |
| I hope you check it out. | |
| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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